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* 


i 



I 



J 


* 





























* \ 




MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 


FROM 


DESCARTES TO SCHOPENHAUER 


AND 


HARTMANN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 


American Political Economy. 

Including Remarks on the Management of the Currency and the 
Finances since the Outbreak of the War of the 
Great Rebellion. 

One volume, crown 8vo, cloth, $2.50. 


Sent, post-paid, upon receipt of the price by the Publishers, 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, & CO. 

743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 





MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 


FROM 


DESCARTES TO SCHOPENHAUER 

AND 


HARTMANN. 


BT 

FRANCIS BOWEN, A. M., 

il 


ALPORD PROFESSOR OP NATURAL RELIGION AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN 
HARVARD COLLEGE 


SECOND EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 

SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY. 

1878. 



Copyright, 1877 , 

By SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, & CO. 


Exchange 

Ub’ry. Amer. Unlv. Grad. School 
Mar. 9,1937 




RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE! 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 


PREFACE. 


It has not been my purpose in this work to write a com¬ 
plete History of Modern Philosophy. Such an undertaking, 
if fitly carried out, would far exceed the limits within which 
I wished to keep, and would compel me to enter into some 
wearisome details. I have endeavored to present a full anal¬ 
ysis and criticism of the systems only of those great think¬ 
ers whose writings have permanently influenced the course 
of European thought, paying most attention to the earlier 
French and later German philosophers, with whom com¬ 
paratively few English readers are at all familiar. Hence 
I have said little about Hobbes or Locke, Hume, Reid, or 
Hamilton, whose writings are accessible to all, and who 
ought not to be studied by thoughtful and earnest inquirers 
at second hand. But the great names of Descartes, Spinoza, 
and Malebranche, of Leibnitz and Kant, of Fichte, Schelling, 
and Hegel, are little more than names with most English 
students, even including many of those who assume to weigh 
their systems against each other and to dogmatize respect¬ 
ing their merits and defects. Perhaps the experience of one 
whose duty it has been for many years to lecture upon their 
writings to large classes of University students may have 
been valuable, in so far as it has induced the endeavor to 
make intelligible what is abstruse and obscure, and to render 
a discussion interesting which may appear at first sight re¬ 
pulsive, though it is really important and profound. I be¬ 
lieve that Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, to mention no 



VI 


PREFACE. 


others, have not been fairly appreciated by English students 
of philosophy, because they have not been thoroughly un¬ 
derstood, probably for the reason that metaphysical thought 
on the Continent of Europe generally assumes a pedantic 
and technical garb to which the countrymen of Locke and 
Berkeley are not habituated, and for which they have an 
instinctive dislike. A translation of their works, however 
faithfully executed, is even more obscure than the original, 
as it sacrifices the advantage which one who studies them in 
German possesses through the etymology of the technical 
terms, which often reflects much light upon their meaning 
and upon the general course of thought. My purpose has 
been to furnish an exposition of their systems which should 
be intelligible throughout, and also comprehensive enough 
to enable the student to form a fair estimate of their excel¬ 
lences and defects, and even, if he wishes, to peruse with 
little difficulty the works themselves, either in the original 
or in an English translation. In particular, I have endeav¬ 
ored to give a complete analysis and explanation of Kant’s 
“ Critique of Pure Reason; ” for one who has fairly mas¬ 
tered this great work holds the key to all German meta¬ 
physics. 

One who publishes a treatise upon Modern Philosophy, 
however, may reasonably aspire to be something more than 
a commentator. Aiming to be thorough and impartial in 
setting forth the opinions of others, I have also held it to be 
a duty frankly to avow and earnestly to defend the whole 
doctrine which appeared to me to be just and true, whether 
it was also of good report or not. No one can be an earnest 
student of Philosophy without arriving at definite convic¬ 
tions respecting the fundamental truths of Theology. In 
my own case, nearly forty years of diligent inquiry and re¬ 
flection concerning these truths have served only to enlarge 
and confirm the convictions with which I began, and which 
are inculcated in this book. Earnestly desiring to avoid 


PREFACE. 


vii 

prejudice on either side, and to welcome evidence and argu¬ 
ment from whatever source they might come, without pro¬ 
fessional bias, and free from any external inducement to 
teach one set of opinions rather than another, I have faith¬ 
fully studied most of what the philosophy of these modern 
times and the science of our own day assume to teach. And 
the result is, that I am now more firmly convinced than 
ever that what has been justly called “ the dirt-philosophy ” 
of materialism and fatalism is baseless and false. I accept 
with unhesitating conviction and belief the doctrine of the 
being of one Personal God, the Creator and Governor of the 
world, and of one Lord Jesus Christ, in whom “ dwelleth all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily; ” and I have found noth¬ 
ing whatever in the literature of modern infidelity which, 
to my mind, casts even the slightest doubt upon that belief. 
Not being a clergyman, I am not exposed to the cruel im¬ 
putation which unbelievers have too long been permitted to 
fling against the clergy, of being induced by prudential 
motives to profess what they do not believe. Let me be 
permitted also to repeat the opinion, which I ventured to 
express as far back as 1849, that “ the time seems to have 
arrived for a more practical and immediate verification than 
the world has ever yet witnessed of the great truth, that 
the civilization which is not based upon Christianity is big 
with the elements of its own destruction.” 


Harvard College, Cambridge, July 3, 1877. 





CONTEXTS 


CHAPTER I. 

PAG! 

Introductory. — The Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. — 
Relations of Philosophy to Psychology and Logic . . . 1 

t 

CHAPTER H. 

Descartes.22 

CHAPTER III. 

Innate Ideas. — The Idea of God in the Soul of Man • . . 38 

CHAPTER IV. 

Spinoza.60 

CHAPTER Y. 

Malebranche.73 

CHAPTER YI. 

Pascal .87 

CHAPTER VII. 

Leibnitz ... .. . 99 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Realism, Nominalism, and Conceptualism.127 

CHAPTER IX. 

Berkeleyanism 141 








X 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER X. 

Transition to Kant. — His Life and Character. — The Purpose of 
the Critique. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. — Transcendental ^Esthetic 


CHAPTER XII. 

Kant’s Critique continued. — Transcendental Logic 


CHAPTER XIII. 

Kant’s Critique continued. — Transcendental Dialectic . 


CHAPTER XIV. 

Kant’s Groundwork of Ethics . . 

CHAPTER XV. 

Positivism. — Relations of what is called Science to Philosophy . 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient 
Reason.— The Freedom of the Will. 


Fichte 


CHAPTER XVII. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 
Sci telling : The Philosophy of the Absolute 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Hegel. I. — All resolved into One 


CHAPTER XX. 


PAGE 

154 


170 


192 


221 


245 


259 


283 


310 


327 


357 


Hegel. II. — One developed into All . 


373 





CONTENTS, 


XI 


Arthur Schopenhauer. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

PAGE 

I. — The World as Presentation and Will 389 


CHAPTER XXII. 


Arthur Schopenhauer. II. — Pessimism, ^Esthetics, and Ethics . 410 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious . . • • . 429 

♦ 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

Hartmann's Metaphysics of the Unconscious 


459 



































MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


CHAPTER I. 

Introductory. — The Philosophy of the Seventeenth 
Century. — Relations of Philosophy to Psychology 
and Logic. 

What we have first to consider is the philosophy of the seven¬ 
teenth century; and this as represented to us more particularly in 
the writings of Descartes and his immediate successors. Histori¬ 
cally considered, the period is one of great importance. It is 
more fertile than any other century since the Christian era in the 
great names, and the leading dogmas and systems, of the phil¬ 
osophy of these modern times. It is the age of Descartes, Pascal, 
Spinoza, Gassendi, Malebranche, and Leibnitz, — of Hobbes, Cud- 
worth, John Locke, and Samuel Clarke. I do not include the 
name which many will think the greatest of them all, because the 
philosophy of Bacon is primarily concerned only with the means 
of making discoveries in physical science, and, through them, of 
promoting the outward well-being of mankind, treating only in¬ 
cidentally, and with a view to this purpose, of the great problems 
of metaphysical science, and of those fundamental truths of our 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual being, which it is our present ob¬ 
ject to investigate. The “ Novum Organon ” ought to be read in 
connection with the writings, not of the great men just mentioned, 
except so far as some of these distinguished themselves also in the 
departments of mathematical and physical research, but of Kepler, 
Galileo, and Newton, of Franklin, Cuvier, and Faraday. The 
philosophy of modern inductive science will come into view in this 
book only so far as it is governed by the universal laws of thought 
and by the philosophy of the human mind. 

The seventeenth century deserves study not only on account of 
1 



2 


PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 


the genius of the great men who illustrated it, but because it was 
an epoch in the history of human thought, and the proper birth¬ 
time of the philosophy of these modern days. Every former age, 
every preceding school of thought, as far back at least as the origin 
of metaphysical speculation with the Pythagoreans and the Eleatics, 
was more or less colored by antecedent systems and the authority 
of former times. Each was built upon a foundation that had been 
already laid for it; each spoke to minds already to a great extent 
preoccupied. Even Plato professed only to repeat the colloquial 
teachings of his great master Socrates, and Aristotle continually 
refers to the doctrines of those whom he calls “ the ancients,” whom 
he cites, indeed, “ with a sort of indulgent consciousness of superi¬ 
ority.” At a later period, the Alexandrian School avowed the 
Eclectic principle, and put together a patchwork of Oriental mys¬ 
ticism and Greek dialectics. Then, for a long interval, philosophy 
was merged in theology, and all questions were answered peremp¬ 
torily by the authority of the Scriptures and the Church. In 
Scholasticism pure speculation and argumentative subtlety revived, 
but only within the limits of faith. The ambition of Thomas 
Aquinas and the other Schoolmen was to erect theology into a 
perfect science, distributed into parts with exact method, and rest¬ 
ing upon philosophical dogmas with a carefully traced filiation of 
doctrines. Aristotelic premises were evoked to support theolog¬ 
ical conclusions. Novelty was shunned, because it immediately 
incurred suspicion of heresy. 

Then came a startling conjuncture of great events, which 
brought about a revolution in human thought and in the course 
of external affairs. The Revival of Letters, the invention of 
printing, the Reformation in religion, the discovery of America 
and the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, and the rapid 
development of the power of the municipalities and the burgher 
class, were all crowded together, so to speak, into one epoch, about 
the close of the fifteenth century. A great crisis had arrived, and 
men’s minds were perplexed with awe and hope as old institutions 
crumbled around them, and former modes of thought became dis¬ 
credited. Other revolutions had been produced and accompanied 
by the shock of arms, and were productive in the main of material 
changes; but the present was an outburst of mental activity, 
which showed itself in the destruction of old dogmas, the progress 
of discovery and invention, and the collision of new opinions. 
Physical science started first in the race, and soon achieved great 
success, because it carried less weight; it was comparatively little 


INTRODUCTORY. 


3 


impeded by jealous authority or old traditions. Most of its devo¬ 
tees worked in an open field and without dread of consequences; 
the persecution of Galileo was an almost solitary case. Metaphys¬ 
ical science at first threw off the yoke of Scholasticism and the 
authority of the Middle Ages only to subject itself once more to 
the great minds of Greece, whose writings had been brought again 
to light with all the charms of novelty and the graces of eloquence 
by the Revival of Letters. The philosophy of the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury is rightly called by Cousin a necessary and useful transition 
from the absolute slavery of thought in mediaeval times to its ab¬ 
solute independence a century afterwards. The leading philos¬ 
ophers of that century were great scholars, rather than great 
thinkers. They hunted out and collated old manuscripts; with 
indefatigable zeal and industry they translated, annotated, and 
lectured on Plato and Aristotle. We find among them a school of 
idealistic Platonism, always tending to mysticism, and a class of 
peripatetics, worshipping Aristotle, and always sliding into mate¬ 
rialism and skepticism. The former school may be said to have 
begun with Marsilius Ficinus, and ended with the martyr, Gior¬ 
dano Bruno. The latter consisted of a crowd of speculatists upon 
medicine, astronomy, and cosmogony, not infrequently passing over 
into magic and thaumaturgy. 

The glory remained for Descartes and his contemporaries and 
successors, the men of the seventeenth century, to break with the 
past altogether. They no longer deigned even to controvert an¬ 
cient philosophy or mediaeval metaphysics, but passed them by as 
obsolete, perhaps with silent contempt, and busied themselves with 
an attempt to reconstruct the philosophical edifice from its foun¬ 
dations. They accepted nothing upon authority; they borrowed 
not a stick or a stone from those who had gone before them. 
None of them were learned men, except in the mathematical and 
physical sciences. I mean they were not scholars in the technical 
meaning of that name; they cared nothing for antiquity, and 
seldom quoted books. Perhaps they carried this peculiarity too 
far ; they had too much contempt for what had gone before; 
their chief fault was intellectual arrogance. For they aspired to 
reconstruct not merely the foundations of knowledge, but the 
whole structure; to build anew from corner stone to pinnacle. 
Each one aimed at completeness; each endeavored to think out a 
full theory of philosophy, with all the parts fitly dovetailed and 
put together. Philosophy to them was the science of first princi¬ 
ples carried out to its ultimate results, and verified by its adequacy 


4 


PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 


to meet every case and settle every doubt. At least, this was 
eminently the case with Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hobbes, and, 
though in a different sense, John Locke. It was long ago re¬ 
marked of Descartes, that he began by doubting every thing, even 
his own existence, and ended by thinking that he had proved 
every thing, so as to leave his successors nothing to do. Spinoza 
followed the Cartesian method with even greater mathematical 
rigor and precision. Beginning after the manner of the geometer 
with a full series of definitions and axioms, by their aid he dem¬ 
onstrates in order all the propositions needing proof, and thus 
proceeds till he has covered the whole ground of possible knowl¬ 
edge. Though the writings of Leibnitz were fragmentary and 
miscellaneous, the character of his mind was systematic even to 
excess, and his genius more daring and comprehensive than that 
of any man of modern times. His towering ambition aspired to 
fashion and create anew all science and philosophy, through a few 
pregnant aphorisms and assumptions, which he stated with inimita¬ 
ble force and brevity ; and though he was obliged to leave them not 
half worked out, many of them have been verified by the progress 
of discovery since his day, and have shaped the whole course of 
modern speculation. The character of Hobbes is intimated in his 
insolent remark, “ If I had read as many books as other men, I 
should have been as ignorant as they are.” According to an emi¬ 
nent critic, only Aristotle and Kant were his equals in what may 
be called the genius of System, — the logical filiation of doctrines 
having the broadest and most diverging consequences. His influ¬ 
ence is even now predominant in one of the leading schools of 
speculative science both in England and this country. The mod¬ 
esty of Locke is as evident as the haughtiness and dogmatism of 
Hobbes. But his philosophy covers as much ground, though 
worked out in a different spirit and with a very dissimilar method. 
His object was “ to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent 
of human knowledge,” not by logical deduction, from a few self- 
evident principles, but by careful observation and patient research. 
The characteristics of his work are sound judgment and clear com¬ 
mon sense existing in that rare perfection in which they become 
coincident with far-sighted genius. In his Essay, he never cites 
Descartes or Hobbes by name, though his purpose evidently is to 
refute some of their principal doctrines. 

One of the chief influences that shaped the philosophy of the 
seventeenth century was the rapid development, at that time, of 
mathematical and physical science. Descartes, Leibnitz, and 


INTRODUCTORY. 


5 


Pascal were the greatest mathematicians of their own age, and 
among the greatest of all modern times. The discoveries of the 
two former changed the whole face of the science and paved the 
way for all its subsequent success; and Pascal was a prodigy of 
parts, who discovered geometry anew, and seemed to discern by 
intuition what others could obtain only by patient and long con¬ 
tinued effort. The rigorous methods of filiation and proof, the 
completeness, precision, and certainty which characterize mathe¬ 
matics, these men endeavored to transfer to philosophy. Spinoza 
and Hobbes, though not to so great a degree adepts in exact sci¬ 
ence, still strove, with good success in this respect, to follow their 
example. Locke, as might have been expected from his early 
studies in medicine, rather followed the inductive method, and 
aimed at completeness through a comprehensive examination of 
all the phenomena. Physical discovery had made vast progress, 
and the triumphant anticipations of Bacon had begun to be real¬ 
ized. Astronomical science had been revolutionized, and the dis¬ 
covery and proof of the great law of gravitation were already fore¬ 
shadowed, though not as yet formally announced. This great 
success had generated enthusiasm and inspired confidence in future 
effort. Never was there greater activity of mind, or more vigor 
and originality of speculation. Not in physical science only, but 
in every department of intellectual effort, ambition was kindled 
and grand results were confidently expected. In the mere collis¬ 
ion of opinions, in the conflict of opposing systems, many sparks 
of truth were struck out; everywhere were signs of energy and 
life. 

It has seemed to me that the writings of these men would be a 
fitting introduction to a course of philosophical study. We need 
not fear that we shall thus be unprofitably detained in groping 
over the history of the past, digging up the dead bones of dogmas 
and systems that have passed away and of obsolete controversies. 
Philosophy, it is true, repeats itself in each succeeding'age,— 
under new influences perhaps, with a different bias, and with ten¬ 
dencies and applications that are often entirely novel. But the 
groundwork is always the same, the old problems and questions are 
perpetually recurrent, the same difficulties and stumbling blocks 
impede our progress, and the answers, the attempted solutions, are 
found along the old lines of inquiry. Philosophy is uniform, be¬ 
cause it is founded on the unity of human nature. Curiosity is 
excited by the same objects, the old doubts and fears start up 
afresh, and we try the former paths of escape from the same laby- 


6 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


rinth. There is not a question now agitated between the rival 
schools of speculation in our own days, either by Mill and the 
Positivists on the one hand, or by the German Transcendentalists 
on the other, which does not find its prototype in the discussions 
of the seventeenth century, and even much farther back, in the 
Academy, the Porch, and the Garden of the Greeks. Hamilton 
and Mansel repeat Pascal. Mill follows the same track with 
Hobbes and Locke. Kant is largely influenced by Leibnitz ; 
Fichte’s motto is the old Cartesian cogito, ergo sum; and Schel- 
ling is a reproduction, with modern improvements, of Spinoza. 
Modern astronomy will sooner be emancipated from Copernicus 
and Kepler, than modern philosophy from its teachers and guides 
of two hundred years ago. 

This is no confession of weakness or plagiarism on the part of 
our contemporaries. The repetition is often unconscious ; little is 
borrowed, and no attempt is made to establish systems or opinions 
on the mere authority of the past. The coincidence is that only 
which necessarily results from the sameness of subject, the unity 
of human nature, and the common purpose iri view. “ It is not in 
Montaigne, but in myself,’’ says Pascal, “ that I find all which I 
read in his book.” Always, also, the issues are colored and diver¬ 
sified by the ever changing circumstances of the age. The theme 
is old, but it is repeated with a thousand variations, and is ap¬ 
plied and adapted to the protean forms of literature, and to the 
constant progress of physical science. The empiricism and posi¬ 
tivism of Hobbes are necessarily unlike those of Comte and 
Lewes, because, in the interval between them, whole sciences, 
like biology, geology, and political economy, have been constructed 
and largely developed. These large additions to our stores of 
knowledge have not only supplied new evidence and illustrations 
bearing on old problems, but have affected the whole current of 
philosophic thought. 

If we lose something of the freshness of modern inquiry by 
going back to the philosophy of two centuries ago, we gain by 
taking up questions nearer their source, when they were presented 
with greater purity and simplicity. Already we are falling too 
much under the direction of the schools of thought of our own 
day. What we have to dread is the authority not so much of the 
past, as of the present, — the overshadowing influence, the pres¬ 
tige, of great names and European reputation. Great distance 
affects the imagination and cows the intellect even more than 
great antiquity. The best discipline for enabling us fairly to 


INTRODUCTORY. 


7 


think our own thoughts is to escape from the heated discussions 
of the hour, the glare and turmoil of the work actually going on 
around us, and go back to study essentially the same questions 
under the softer light and still atmosphere of a former age. 
The spirit of partisanship is rife among us, not only in politics 
and religion, but in what should be the calm domain of science and 
abstract thought. We take sides too eagerly in a number of hot 
disputes, where the combatants apparently think more of triumph¬ 
ing over their opponents than of the progress of discovery or the 
interests of truth. Some of our savans seem more ambitious to be 
accounted hard hitters, than to be first in peaceful victories over 
ignorance and sin. The taste for these gladiatorial exhibitions has 
been fostered by the unhappy transference of the arena of contest 
to periodicals weekly or bi-monthly, and even to the newspapers, 
where the shouts of a mob are the guerdon of victory. It is a 
relief to go back to a century in which the war of words was 
conducted only in folios read by the erudite few, and of which the 
personal animosities have long since been buried. 

But is not the admission now made a hazardous one ? What 
profit, it may be asked, can there be in constantly grinding the 
same corn over again in the old mill ? Or what gain in repeating 
the labor of Penelope, forever weaving and unravelling the same 
web ? None at all, we may frankly answer, if the only object 
in life is to be fed and clothed. To adopt the language of Mr. 
Wallace, “ the very terms in which Lord Bacon scornfully depre¬ 
ciated one great result of philosophy must be accepted in their 
literal truth. Like a nun, a virgin consecrated to God, she pro¬ 
duces no offspring; she bears no fruit.” The question which 
jesting Pilate addressed to our Saviour, and did not wait for an 
answer, “ What is truth ? ” has not been answered yet, and proba¬ 
bly never will be. But is there no advantage, then, in the en¬ 
deavor to find an answer, though it be announced only with a 
stammering tongue ? The problems with which we are even now 
occupied were problems in the days of Thales and Xenophanes — 
in the very infancy of the human race; they are unsolved yet, 
and many of them are perhaps insoluble. But what of that? 
Philosophy, as its very name imports, is not so much truth, as the 
search after truth. Hamilton with good reason quotes Seneca, 
sordet cognita veritas ; the truth already known is already of no 
account, as it no longer enters into the activity of intellect, but 
only cumbers it with passive accumulations. The wealth, polit¬ 
ical economists tell us, which is literally locked up, only rusts or 


8 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


rots; and we might as well put dried leaves or slate stones in its 
place. It is really of use only when it is in the form of capital, 
constantly changing its form, circulating from hand to hand, and 
thereby keeping up the industry and life of the whole community. 
So is it with knowledge. , Truths already found out and demon¬ 
strated, and then duly classified and ticketed, so as to be stored 
away in books or in the pigeon-holes of memory, are really unpro¬ 
ductive and dead wealth, serving no purpose but to pamper the 
vanity of its possessor. A large portion of it is voluntarily for¬ 
gotten, for it is registered in books, and with the aid of cata¬ 
logues, indices, and vade-mecums , we know where to find it. 
“We cannot be too often reminded,” says an eminent empiricist, 
“ that the really great men, and those who are the sole permanent 
benefactors of their species, are not the great experimenters, 
nor the great observers, nor the great readers, nor the great 
scholars; but the great thinkers. Thought is the creator and 
vivifier of all human affairs. Actions, facts, and external man¬ 
ifestations of every kind, often triumph for a while; but it is 
the progress of ideas which ultimately determines the progress of 
the world. Unless these are changed, every other change is 
superficial, and every improvement is precarious.” The world 
already has more facts at its command than it knows what to do 
with. The mind, like the body, can easily get food enough; 
what it craves is activity, — exercise and a good digestion. The 
naturalists, in respect to the mere materials of their science, are 
already suffering from the embarrassment of riches, and so are 
beginning to think that there is something better to do than to 
travel to the ends of the earth in order to add one or two new 
species or varieties to a list already numbering about one hundred 
thousand, carefully laid away and drying up in herbariums. In 
our own day and neighborhood, an earnest advocate of what are 
called “ utilitarian studies,” frankly confesses that “ the boundless 
nomenclature of natural history bids fair to exhaust the resources 
of all languages, as it has already done of most brains that have 
set about its amplification and its reduction to use.” 

I am not decrying the proper worth of such collections. They 
have a use, though it is a subordinate one. Like encyclopaedias 
and dictionaries, they are good for reference, — that is, to aid in¬ 
quiry. They are serviceable, also, so far as they suggest new 
questions or feed the discussion of old ones, — so far as they stim¬ 
ulate and keep up research. But the means must never outrank 
the end. Always what is of highest moment is the search, the 


INTRODUCTORY. 


9 

endeavor, the question not yet answered, the problem not yet 
solved, and, it may be, insoluble. 

But why seek to estimate the loss or gain from an undertaking 
which at any rate is inevitable ? Men have been engaged in the 
pursuit of speculative truth ever since they began to think, though 
voices have never been wanting to admonish them that the end 
was unattainable. But the warning was unheeded, for it is self¬ 
contradictory. Aristotle long ago remarked, that we are compelled 
to philosophize in order to prove that philosophy itself is illusory 
and vain. Skepticism is as much a speculation and a system as 
dogmatism ; either is a nullity, if it does not rest on a philosophical 
basis. How happens it, that the endeavor which is always baffled 
has yet been constantly repeated for the last three thousand years ? 
The only possible answer is, that the effort itself is so irresistibly 
attractive that it must be reckoned a necessity of our nature. 

First principles and ultimate principles mean precisely the same 
thing, the nominal' difference between them arising merely from 
that eud or aspect of the subject which happens to come first into 
view. Hence it is that every science, either in its initial steps or 
its final results, leads us infallibly to those higher truths, those 
laws of broadest generalization, those necessary and universal 
ideas, with which philosophy is specially concerned. Hence is it 
that the adepts in any of the special sciences never come to a full 
understanding of their own subjects of inquiry without encroach¬ 
ing upon metaphysical ground; and even our physicists find them¬ 
selves studying and teaching metaphysics unawares. The ideas of 
space and time form the groundwork of mathematics ; those of 
'Substance and causality enter into every investigation of physics ; 
personality and obligation are conditions of morals; right is the 
foundation of law, beauty is the essence of art, supreme goodness 
is the inspiration of religion. When the doctrine of morphology 
was first explained to Schiller, he immediately exclaimed, “ This 
is not an observation , but an idea .” These discussions about the 
Reign of Law, the Origin of Species (which is but another name 
for Cosmogony), Pangenesis and Epigenesis, the Conservation and 
the Unity of Force, Morphology, Homology, and Development, — 
these discussions, which have been so far popularized by the 
savans that already they are carried on in the newspapers, — all 
belong to the border ground between facts cognized by sense, and 
the higher truths, independent of experience, which can be grasped 
only by pure reason. In them mere inductive science gives place 
to the anticipations of the intellect; and Plato’s subordination of 


) 


10 


DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY. 


the sensible to the intelligible world, the world of pure ideas, of 
typical and self-existent forms — to o^tojs ov — is realized in the 
most advanced speculations of modern physical science. It is the 
Nemesis of ancient metaphysics following hard upon the steps of 
the Baconian reform. 

At the outset of every enterprise, especially in undertaking a 
new study, we need to know which field it is that we desire to 
enter and survey, what are its precise limits in every direction, 
and what are its relations to the surrounding territory. Other¬ 
wise, we shall be continually throwing away effort, and each step 
taken may only lead us farther away from the goal. Nowhere is 
this difficulty more felt than in Philosophy, in respect to the defini¬ 
tion and boundaries of which hardly any two writers or students 
are agreed. The word itself has a different use in England and 
America from what it has on the continent of Europe. Through¬ 
out Germany and France, it is at least so far restricted as to ex¬ 
clude physics, or the study of material things, whether organic or 
inorganic; and is limited to those inquiries which lead up to, or 
grow out of, the science of mind. At most, the physical sciences 
come into view so far only as the philosopher seeks to determine 
their relations with each other, and thereby their filiation, interde¬ 
pendence, and proper classification in a universal scheme of human 
knowledge; and even this is more properly a special philosophy, 
a philosophy of the sciences, than Philosophy itself, in the ab¬ 
stract. Hence we have the seeming contradiction and absurdity, 
that Comte and his followers write voluminous and ponderous 
works, one leading purpose of which is to prove that Philosophy 
as such is impossible and null, a delusion and a nonentity, consist¬ 
ing of 

“ Windows that exclude the light, 

And passages that lead to nothing.” 

And the very name of these gigantic treatises, which remind us of 
mediaeval folios, the name borne on their title-pages and reiterated 
in every chapter, is “ The Positive Philosophy.” So true is it, as 
I have already said, that Philosophy itself is inevitable, a neces¬ 
sity of human nature. 

In the English language, unluckily, philosophy means almost 
anything, — from a philosophy of the absolute down to a phil¬ 
osophy of gymnastics, of shipbuilding, and of cookery. Even our 
physicists till very recently had no name for their own science but 
“Natural Philosophy,” — the very thing which it is not, and, since 
the Baconian reform, does not even pretend to be. Hence the 


INTRODUCTORY. 


11 


sarcasm of Hegel, that Socrates indeed brought down philosophy 
from the clouds; but the English have degraded her to the 
kitcheu. 

Now we shall at least make some progress towards clearing up 
this confusion, if we relegate at once all these special philosophies 
to the special sciences and arts which they constitute or enter into. 
Suum caique. The philosophy of law is a constituent part of the 
science of law, either its foreporch or its adytum , the interior 
shrine of the goddess. In like manner, the philosophy of medi¬ 
cine is a part of the science of medicine ; and I think it would 
have conduced much to the peace both of state and church, if it 
had been admitted on all hands that the philosophy of theology is 
a part of the science of theology. 

When we attempt to go further than this, and to make our defi¬ 
nition precise and adequate, we encounter a formidable difficulty. 
A definition presupposes a knowledge of the nature and limits of 
the thing defined, and as such would seem to be the latest result of 
philosophical inquiry, instead of an introduction to it. We must 
proceed on trust then, accepting a definition only provisionally, and 
leaving it to be verified by the results of our subsequent studies. 
A preliminary question concerns the relations of our subject to two 
cognate sciences, on which Philosophy in great part is based, if 
indeed it does not comprehend them. Taken in its broader sense, 
Philosophy includes both Psychology and Logic, and by some 
thinkers is limited to them, it being denied that there is any prac¬ 
ticable ground beyond, into which research can be carried with any 
hope of success. Others maintain, and it is my own opinion, that 
these are preliminary or derivative sciences; and that Philosophy 
properly so called, or taken in its narrower sense, stands beside 
them, both giving and receiving aid, and yet having a perfectly 
well defined province of its own. We must begin, then, by ascer¬ 
taining the purpose, scope, and limitations of these two allied 
subjects. 

The name given by John Locke himself to his great work, is 
“ An Essay concerning Human Understanding.” Observe the 
omission of the definite article, which could not have been acci¬ 
dental, as it is adhered to in all the editions published during his 
lifetime, and his smaller posthumous work, purporting to treat 
“ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,” relates to a very differ¬ 
ent subject. This title of the Essay is generally misquoted, and, 
as it seems to me, misunderstood, by nearly all later English writ¬ 
ers, as an Essay on the Human Understanding. The difference 


12 


RELATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY. 


may seem a small one, but it is by no means unimportant. “ The 
Human Understanding ” is a synonyme for the human mind, and in 
an essay on it we should expect to find a treatise on Psychology; 
that is, an analytical account of our mental faculties, and an enu¬ 
meration of the phenomena of consciousness, together with the 
laws to which these phenomena appear to be subject. This sci¬ 
ence is properly designated by Dugald Stewart, “ the experimental 
science of the human mind,” though its more common name since 
his day is “ Psychology.” All parties, even the skeptics and the 
materialists, admit that this is strictly an inductive science, based 
on actual observation, and capable of being treated with strict re¬ 
gard to the Baconian method. John Stuart Mill says of it, “ Psy¬ 
chology, in truth, is simply the knowledge of the laws of human 
nature. If there is anything that deserves to be studied by man, 
it is his own nature and that of his fellow men ; and if it is worth 
studying at all, it is worth studying scientifically, so as to reach the 
fundamental laws which underlie and govern all the rest. There 
are certain observed laws of our thoughts and of our feelings 
which rest upon experimental evidence, and, once seized, are a 
clew to the interpretation of much that we are conscious of in 
ourselves, and observe in one another. Such, for example, are 
the laws of association. Psychology, so far as it consists of such 
laws, is as positive and certain a science as chemistry, and fit to 
be taught as such.” Among writers of our own day, I know only 
two, Comte aud Mr. De Morgan, who have directly denied the 
possibility of such a science. Their objection rests on the as¬ 
sumed absurdity of supposing that the same faculty can be at once 
both subject and object, — observer and observed, — can at the 
same moment manifest the phenomenon, and observe and analyze 
such manifestation. In regard to introspective observation, says 
Comte, “ nothing can be more absurd than the supposition of a 
man seeing himself think.” And De Morgan, with his usual at¬ 
tempt at smartness, warns the student of such a science, “ when he 
tries to look down his own throat with a candle in his hand, to 
take care that he does not set his head on fire.” In rejfiy, we 
need only appeal to the notorious fact, be it comprehensible or 
not, that every man is conscious of what is passing in his own 
mind, and often attempts with good success to render an account 
of what he sees there. 

Be this as it may, it is certain that Locke’s Essay is not — what 
it has very generally of late been supposed to be— a psychologi¬ 
cal treatise on the human understanding. Psychology, as a distinct 


INTRODUCTORY. 


13 


science, had not come into existence in the seventeenth century. 
It had not yet been separated from metaphysics, with which, 
down to a much later day, it was always confusedly blended. Its 
separate existence cannot be traced farther back than to the writ¬ 
ings of Hartley and Reid in England, or of D’Alembert and Con¬ 
dillac in France. The great thinkers of the seventeenth century 
never dreamed of such a science ; and the fragments of psycho¬ 
logical analysis which we find interspersed in their writings, as 
subsidiary to their main purpose, are brief and imperfect. Locke’s 
“ Essay concerning Human Understanding ” (without the article), 
is an inquiry concerning human knowledge , — its origin, nature, 
and certainty. Hence it is almost exclusively metaphysical. The 
ideas of which it treats are not considered chiefly as phenomena 
of the mind, but as elements of cognition. His question was not, 
What do we think and feel, and what laws govern the succession 
of our thoughts and feelings ? — but What do we know ? Whence 
comes our knowledge ? Is it born with us, or comes it from experi¬ 
ence ? What are the boundaries that limit it, and. how far is it 
trustworthy ? 1 Of course, the attempt to answer these questions 
involved and required a certain amount of psychological observa¬ 
tion and analysis; but this only by the way, and as a means for a 
higher purpose. 

We see plainly, then, how Psychology may be defined, and how 
easily it may be kept within its proper limits. Here we are con¬ 
cerned with the human mind as a subject of observation and ex¬ 
periment, and as the supposed seat or origin of certain phenomena 
which admit of number, arrangement, and classification. These 
phenomena are often complex, and need to be analyzed and re¬ 
duced to their simplest elements. Moreover, they are not pro¬ 
duced fortuitously or at random, but are subject to fixed laws, 
more or less obvious, which may be definitely expressed and veri¬ 
fied by experiment. Avoiding all hypotheses, then, as to the 
inmost nature or real essence either of mind t>r matter, it may be 
said that Psychology treats of those properties or facts which we 

1 “ This therefore being my purpose, to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent 
of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and as¬ 
sent ; I shall not at present meddle with the physical consideration of the mind, or 
trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists, or by what motions of our spirits 
or alterations of our bodies, we come to have any sensation by our organs or any ideas in 

our understandings.It shall suffice to my present purpose to consider the 

discerning faculties of a man as they are employed about the objects which they have to 
do with.” — Locke’s Essay, Book I., chap, i., § 2. See also § 3 of the same chapter. 

This also is precisely what Kant proposes to accomplish by his Critique of Pure Rear- 
son , wherein he appears as the continuator and rival of Locke. 


14 


RELATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY. 


learn directly from consciousness; physical science, of those which 
we know through the senses. 

A single illustration may here be given of the characteristic 
features of the two different classes of phenomena now referred to, 
by means of which they can be clearly distinguished from each 
other. I refer to the opposite effects of repeated and continuous 
use on matter and mind. Every material contrivance, every tool 
and machine of man’s device, deteriorates by use. All wear of 
the engine more or less wears it out. Every cut made with a 
knife dulls it. Each time the watch ticks, it becomes a less per¬ 
fect measure of time. Every discharge of a gun increases its lia¬ 
bility to burst. Every foot which a locomotive travels impairs its 
machinery, and grinds down the rail on which it moves. All our 
material implements, if not frequently mended, soon become un¬ 
serviceable. 

Not so is it with any exercise of mind. Here, use refines and 
invigorates, disuse weakens and destroys. It has even become a 
proverb that practice makes perfect, habit renders all things easy, 
work becomes play. The practised accountant sums up long col¬ 
umns of figures so swiftly that the result appears to come by intui¬ 
tion, while the school-boy boggles in attempting to add nine to 
five. The trained musician attains a delicacy and precision of 
touch which appear miraculous. From the quickened apprehen¬ 
sions of hearing and feeling, the blind man learns almost enough 
to compensate him for the loss of sight. The juggler and the skilled 
mechanic attain a sleight of hand which no quickness of eye can 
follow. Those only who have educated the memory by repeated 
effort can know how quickly it may act, or how vast may be its 
stores. Each faculty in turn may be so improved by use that it 
seems to dominate and take possession of the whole mind. Acci¬ 
dent or sickness, it is true, may impair and even disable the men¬ 
tal faculties, or, as is more probable, may obscure or hinder the 
outward manifestation of them ; but in the normal exercise of 
their functions, they never need mending or repair. On the con¬ 
trary, all our spiritual powers gain so much by exercise and culti¬ 
vation here, as to promise a future boundless development in some 
higher state of being. 

Psychology, since it depends on observation and experiment, 
may properly be ranked with the physical sciences. But Phi¬ 
losophy, in the strict sense of the term, as it abandons altogether 
these empirical modes of research, because it looks to questions 
lying behind or above them, — because, as Kant says, it has first to 


INTRODUCTORY. 


15 


consider what makes experience possible, — is often named meta¬ 
physics. I hold that the definition of philosophy thus understood 
was correctly given by Locke and Fichte; that it is what the Ger¬ 
mans call Erkenntnisslehre , — the Theory of Knowledge consid¬ 
ered simply as such, or in the abstract, irrespective of the things 
known. Hence it includes a discussion of the origin, the conditions, 
the limits, the principles, and the certainty of human knowledge; 
and this enumeration of its parts supplies at once a division of 
the subject, and determines the order in which these parts should 
be treated. Every other science has its special object, or class of 
objects, to the investigation of which it is exclusively devoted. 
Thus, arithmetic treats of number, geometry of position and ex¬ 
tension, physics of the general properties of matter, and psychol¬ 
ogy of the phenomena and the modes of action of the human mind. 
But each of these special sciences presupposes that man has the 
power of acquiring knowledge of himself and other things, which 
power, indeed, has its peculiar nature, its conditions, boundaries, 
and imperfections, but when duly exercised within these limits, is 
more or less trustworthy. Because Philosophy treats of knowl¬ 
edge simply as such, it is technically called a pure science. 

Wissenschaftslehre — the doctrine or theory of science — is the 
name given by Fichte to his exposition of a system of metaphysics. 
But there is a difference between knowledge and science, inasmuch 
as one of these terms is generic, and the other specific. All sci¬ 
ence is knowledge, but all knowledge is not science. Science is 
that portion of knowledge which has been reduced to order, pre¬ 
cision, classification, and method; and it aims at, though it does 
not always accomplish, completeness. I may know many things 
individually, though wholly ignorant of the science of those classes 
of things to which these individual things belong. Hence Fichte’s 
definition is open to criticism, in so far as he limits metaphysical 
investigation to science , which is possessed by comparatively few, 
instead of extending it to knowledge , which, whether more or less 
complete, is common to all. This does not mean that Philosophy 
itself is unscientific ; quite the contrary. The doctrine or theory 
may be eminently scientific, while the subject-matter of that doc¬ 
trine or theory, for the very reason that it is universal or common 
to all men, is generally vague, immethodical, and unscientific. 
Perhaps the distinction will become more clear if we state that 
Psychology is the analysis of the cognitive and other faculties of 
the human mind; Philosophy or metaphysics is the analysis of the 
cognitions themselves considered as already formed. As all the 


16 


RELATIONS OF LOGIC TO PHILOSOPHY. 


other sciences are particular, each being the knowledge only of a 
special and limited class of things, while Philosophy alone is gen¬ 
eral, its object being knowledge in the abstract, or as such, irre¬ 
spective of the things known, it is obvious that Philosophy cannot 
borrow its principles from the other sciences, but must impose its 
own principles upon them. Its function is to make laws, and not 
to receive them, except from its own dictation. The truths of any 
particular science must conform not only to the special character¬ 
istics of the limited class of objects with which it deals, but to all 
the limitations and conditions which result from the very nature of 
knowledge considered simply as such. It is the business of Phi¬ 
losophy to determine these universal limitations and conditions, and 
to determine them from the nature of knowledge “per se. To * 
borrow any of them from a special science would be illogical, as 
these would be vitiated by the special conditions of this particular 
science. Hence Philosophy has sometimes been appropriately 
called the science of first principles. 

We have examples of pure science both in Mathematics and 
Logic. The former is the science of pure magnitude, or of meas¬ 
urement and numeration irrespective of the things measured and 
numbered; the latter is the science of pure thought, — that is, of 
thought irrespective of the subjects which we are thinking about. 
This is Logic as understood by Aristotle and Kant; that is, the 
science of the necessary laws of pure Thought, or of thinking in 
the abstract. 

Throughout the Middle Ages, by a great misunderstanding of 
the meaning of Aristotle, Logic was held to be the science, or 
rather the art, of argumentation, and hence as a means (certainly a 
very poor one) for the discovery of truth. This perversion of its 
proper signification and use continued through the seventeenth, 
and even the greater part of the eighteenth, century; and was the 
chief reason why it degenerated into a mere jargon of technicali¬ 
ties, and came to be almost universally decried and neglected. A 
mere art of disputing would be a poor organon for finding out 
new truths; for, as Locke remarked, we must know a thing first, 
and then only can we prove it syllogistically. A vestige of this 
mistaken purpose of the science still exists in what is sometimes 
called inductive Logic, sometimes the logic of discovery and in¬ 
vention, as treated by Lord Bacon, Dr. Whewell, and Mr. Mill, 
if this be understood as a merely speculative science, a rationale, 
or generalized analysis, of the successive steps of procedure whereby 
physical laws are discovered and processes invented, it is a legiti- 


INTRODUCTORY. 


IT 


mate investigation, though one of no practical utility. But re¬ 
garded as an art; as a system of rules to direct future effort, it is 
certainly as futile as the mere brandishing of syllogisms would 
be for the discovery of abstract truth. In the physical sciences, 
the process of invention is essentially tentative : one guess is tried 
after another, just as in solving a Chinese puzzle ; and success 
finally depends on a union of good luck with fertility of imagina¬ 
tion, quickness of insight, and an indescribable tact, which can no 
more be imparted or improved by a system of rules than the art 
of lyric poetry. Successive hypotheses may be verified, indeed, by 
mathematical computation, — by a precise determination of the 
quantitative relations of the phenomena which are studied ; that is, 
we may try on one coat after another, and determine by measure¬ 
ment which comes the nearest to an exact fit. Just so in regard to 
Pure, or what is sometimes called Formal Logic. Its purpose is 
only to teach us how we always have thought, and not any new 
mode of thinking, or new precautions through which we may avoid 
the errors to which we were formerly liable, or by which we may 
discover truths that were formerly unattainable. 

When Logic is said to be the science of Thought, it is evident 
that the word “ Thought ” is not taken in the loose and vague 
sense in which it is a synonyme for any action whatever of the 
human mind. A man does not properly think when he merely re¬ 
ceives some one impression through a single sense, such as red 
light, a sour taste, or a shrill sound; nor when he is merely con¬ 
scious of some one affection of his mind, such as hunger, pain, or 
joy. Each of these is only a single presentation to sense, an in¬ 
tuition of our receptive faculty, the mind exerting no conscious 
activity in it, but passively receiving an impression as perceived 
now and here, and single, without reference to any thing else, and 
without any distinction of parts or attributes. We must suppose 
the lowest brute, as an oyster, if sentient, to be capable of such in¬ 
tuitions ; and what is received in them may be called the mere 
brute matter of knowledge; but it is matter without form, and so 
not properly a cognition, but only the rough material, to be subse¬ 
quently worked up into knowledge. To complete the process, the 
aid of the thinking or elaborative faculty — i. e. the understand¬ 
ing— must be called in. We compare this impression with some 
one received before, recognize its likeness or unlikeness, partial or 
total, to that former object, analyze it into its parts and attributes, 
ind so refer it to a class of things formerly known, and thereby 
give it a name, — the common name of that class. In short, we 




r\ ✓ 


18 


RELATIONS OF LOGIC TO PHILOSOPHY. 


reflect upon, or think, the object long enough, in common phrase, 
“ to take it in,” or know it for what it is. Comparison and the 
discernment of relations may be said to be the essence, or common 
element, of pure Thought; for it is only by comparing one sensa¬ 
tion, or one object, with others, that we can consciously recognize 
it, through discriminating those respects in which it is similar from 
those in which it is unlike them ; and so know it, either as a red 
or blue color, a soft or hard object, a leaf, an apple, or a stone. 
Sensation or intuition gives us only individual impressions, — this 
one feeling and no other. On the other hand, Thought, and lan¬ 
guage, which is the expression of Thought, has to do only with 
groups or classes of things. The imagination, like the senses, 
deals only with particular intuitions, or individual things. If I 
imagine a color, sound, or object, it is always single and definite, 
this one shade of red, that note of the canary or robin, that par¬ 
ticular engraving ; a group or class, or rather the notion which 
my mind has of a group or class, cannot be imagined ; it can only 
be thought. 

It was long ago remarked by Hobbes, semper idem sentire, ac 
non sentire, ad idem recidunt, — always to have the same sensation, 
is precisely equivalent to having no conscious sensation at all. 
Thus, if I pass out of strong light into an utterly dark room, I 
feel or am conscious of that darkness, through its contrast with the 
perception of light a moment before ; but if I were born in that 
darkness, I should have no conscious perception of it, no sense of 
my infinite loss. The same odor always in the nostrils is no sense 
of odor at all. He who has lived nowhere but on the very bor¬ 
ders of Niagara never hears the low thunder with which the 
waters constantly fill the air; but let him go away, though only 
for an hour, and when he returns he will instantly become sensi¬ 
ble of it. State this fact in general terms, and we have this law : 
— Thought is necessary to make even feeling or sensation to be 
conscious feeling or sensation; and Thought can take place only 
through discrimination, or the perception of difference. Now such 
discrimination is the cognition of a quality or attribute (called in 
Logic, a mark), whereby this is distinguished from that. Hence 
Esser rightly gives as one definition of Thought, that it is repre¬ 
senting an object to ourselves through its distinctive marks. We 
conceive, and thus know, an object only through grasping together 
'nto unity its separate qualities and attributes, which make it what 
it is, by distinguishing it from what it is not. If it has no such 
attributes, there is nothing to be grasped together — nothing to be 
thought of; it is an impossible conception — a nonentity. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


19 


I should not dwell so long on this point, if it did not manifest 
so clearly the utter futility of that theory which resolves all our 
knowledge into sensations and groups of sensations run together, 
through a process of mental chemistry, by the power of association. 
True, all knowledge begins with sensation; in this admission, 
Locke and Kant are at one. A foreign impulse, a breath of air 
from the world without, 4s necessary to wake the mind to conscious 
life. But the sensation is so far from constituting the knowledge, 
that it does not even enter into it, or form any portion of it. 
Sensation and the consciousness of sensation, as we have seen, are 
not the same thing. The proper beginning — that is, the first 
step — of knowledge is consciousness ; for the very phrase, uncon¬ 
scious knowledge, is a contradiction in terms. Conscious knowl¬ 
edge does not grow out of the first sensation, for that is uncon¬ 
scious ; nor even out of the second sensation; but out of a 
perception of the relation of the first sensation to the second. For 
this relation is thought; it is a true cognition of difference, and 
thereby a cognition of a distinctive mark or attribute ; and such 
perception constitutes knowledge properly so called. A breath of 
air wakes the instrument within us to music; and yet the music 
is not in the breath, but in the instrument, which was previously 
constituted and attuned for its own peculiar harmonies. 

Thus far I have explained the action of Thought only in its 
first form or process, namely, in conception, or what was called by 
the older logicians, simple apprehension. But there are two other 
forms or processes of pure Thought, namely, judgment and reason¬ 
ing, or inference. Judgment is simply affirmation or denial; we 
judge when we declare that A is B, or A is not B. These two 
formulas are the universal expression of judgment; that is, every 
particular judgment, whatever may be its matter, must have just 
this form, and no other. The mere succession or coexistence of 
two thoughts in the mind does not constitute a judgment. I may 
think first of man , and then of animal; but no judgment takes 
place until I affirm in thought a perceived relation between the 
two, or until I think man is animal. And the effect of this act 
of judgment is to reduce in thought the two terms to one, — a sin¬ 
gle concept of the mind or object of thought, namely, animal man , 
or human animal. 

And this brings to light a chief function of the understanding or 
thinking power; it is the unifying faculty in our minds; it reduces 
many to one. As we have seen, conception is the act of grasping 
together two or more attributes into the unity of thought which we 


20 


RELATIONS OF LOGIC TO PHILOSOPHY. 


call a single concept. In like manner, judgment reduces its two 
terms to one; by affirming the predicate of the subject, it forges 
them into one thought. Inference or syllogism, the third act of 
pure Thought, also shows the tendency of the mind to unity, since 
it sums up the results of two judgments and three terms in a single 
conclusion. 

Now the distinctive feature of Logic as a science is its exposi¬ 
tion of the necessary laws which underlie and govern these three 
processes of Thought. I call them laws in the strictest sense of 
that word. They are not mere statements of general facts, or 
empirical laws, like those in psychology and the natural sciences, 
objects and events being thrown together into groups according to 
their relations of similarity or mutual dependence. Neither are 
they practical maxims, of limited and contingent applicability, but 
considered useful for the conduct of our powers and the guidance 
of research. Such maxims are laid down in abundance by writers 
upon rhetoric and what is called inductive Logic, though I suspect 
no great good has ever resulted from any conscious attempt at con¬ 
formity with them. But these laws of pure Thought, with which 
we are now concerned, are as absolute as the axioms of geometry, 
which indeed they closely resemble. In one sense, they contain 
nothing new, as we have been acting upon them all our lives; 
though, perhaps on account of their very obviousness, they have 
never been explicitly stated or drawn out into distinct conscious¬ 
ness. They do hot admit of proof, as their truth is presupposed 
in every act of reasoning, and therefore no argument or proof is 
possible, unless their validity is taken for granted. The laws of 
pure Thought are necessities of Thought, since a conscious violation 
of them is impossible. It is true, that in what Leibnitz calls the 
symbolic use of language, whereby, in order to shorten the intel¬ 
lectual process, we substitute words for thoughts, employing them 
like algebraic symbols without spreading out their meaning before 
the mind, we may, through hurry and carelessness, violate these 
fundamental laws. But in such cases, as soon as we return upon 
our steps with an effort to think clearly and distinctly, it is imme¬ 
diately perceived that we have been misled, not merely into erro¬ 
neous or defective thought, but into that confusion which is really 
a negation of thought, that is, an absurdity and a contradiction. 

Some of these necessary laws of Thought have a necessary bear¬ 
ing upon the great doctrines of theology and philosophy. Such is 
one that I have attempted to set forth, — the law, namely, that con¬ 
ception or simple apprehension, since it is a perception of relations, 


INTRODUCTORY. 


21 


is possible only through plurality and difference. It is only an 
application of this law to say, that no definition can be made, that 
is, no thought can become definite, except by limitation and nega¬ 
tion. Its scope is determined only by setting strict boundaries 
which it cannot pass, and we set forth fully what it is only by 
ascertaining what it is not. Omnis determinatio est negatio. If 
we give to any object of thought parts or attributes, and no defini¬ 
tion is possible without one or the other, we negative its unity. 
This law of thought is the occult principle which, .as we shall see 
hereafter, determined all the peculiarities of the system of Spinoza. 
It lies at the root of all those discussions about the conceivableness 
of the Infinite and the Absolute, and the objective reality of space 
and time, which have been so rife in our own day. It gives the 
logical consecution and semblance of validity to the arguments of 
the Pantheists, which have caused their theory to appear, not as the 
wild and extravagant speculation that it really is, but as the most 
orderly and thoroughly reasoned scheme of the universe which the 
human intellect has ever framed; which has imparted to it, in fact, 
the strange fascination that it has seemed to possess in every age 
that has developed any power of abstract thought. 


CHAPTER II. 


Descartes. 

Rene Descartes was born on the last day of March, 1596, at 
La Haye, a small town in France situated between Tours and 
Poitiers. He was of a noble family, which derived its territorial 
name and dignity, Du Perron, from a small landed estate which it 
formerly owned in the province of Poitou. He was educated at 
the newly founded College of La Fleche, under the direction of 
the Jesuits; but he showed no liking or aptitude for any of the 
sciences which they attempted to teach him except pure mathemat¬ 
ics, which he studied with great assiduity and success. As for 
Philosophy, he found nothing in it which was not subject to dis¬ 
pute, and judged that it must be entirely reformed before it could 
become a foundation for the other sciences. Before attempting 
such a reform, however, he thought best, by means of foreign travel 
and by following the profession of arms, to study the great book 
of the world. He served for some years, first under Prince 
Maurice of Nassau, and afterwards under the Elector of Bavaria; 
and it was while engaged in garrison duty, according to his own 
account, that he invented the earlier portions of his system of 
philosophy. After quitting the army, he lived for three years in 
Paris, where he sought the society rather of people of fashion and 
men of the world than of the learned, and did not even addict 
himself to books. When his plans were ripe, however, he found a 
quiet retreat in Holland, which was then an asylum for free 
thought, and there pursued his researches into science with great 
ardor. Still he made little use of books, but devoted himself 
rather to scientific experiments and to patient meditation. He 
entered into correspondence, however, with the eminent men 
throughout Europe who were engaged in similar pursuits with 
himself, and soon acquired high reputation among them as an 
original and profound thinker. After he was fifty years old, he 
went to Sweden at the invitation of Queen Christina, and died 
there, at Stockholm, in February, 1650. 


DESCARTES. 


23 


It is common with some writers at the present day to regard 
Descartes as a skeptic, and the merits of his philosophy as a proof 
of the excellence of skepticism, because it is founded upon a sys¬ 
tem of universal and systematic doubt. On the contrary, he is the 
prince of dogmatists, and of self-sufficient, methodical, and consec¬ 
utive thinkers. The true skeptic, as Descartes himself remarks, 
doubts for the sake of doubting, and therefore ends, as he began, 
with doubt. On the contrary, I doubt, he says, only in order to 
believe. “ My whole design looks to the attainment of certainty; 
and I push aside the light and movable earth and the quicksand, 
only in order to find the solid rock or clay upon which a founda¬ 
tion can be safely built.” The doctrine which he sought to estab¬ 
lish was the certainty of human knowledge. His chief fault was 
intellectual arrogance. He was not content simply to point out a 
method of inquiry, by following which other minds and after ages 
might, through combined effort, accumulate by degrees the neces¬ 
sary materials and slowly build up the structure of truth. That 
was Bacon’s plan. Descartes proposed to do the whole work him¬ 
self. Bacon invented a method, while Descartes erected a system. 
He assumed to create at once by independent research a theory of 
science, which should rest, like mathematics, on indisputable ax¬ 
ioms or first truths; with all the parts, as in mathematics again, 
duly arranged each in its proper place, and fitly jointed and 
bolted together, so as to bid defiance to decay or change. He had 
observed, he says, that works executed by one hand were more 
regular, and the parts more harmonious and better fitted to each 
other, than those which united the contributions of different minds 
and successive centuries. The political constitution of Lacedae¬ 
mon, for instance, in his opinion, excelled that of the other states 
of Greece, because it was the work of one man, and came per¬ 
fect from the conception of a single artificer. “ Instead of choosing, 
therefore, among the opinions of others, I thought it right to form 
an opinion for myself.” 

This language fully justifies the eulogy which has often been 
bestowed upon him; that the characteristic of Mediaeval Philoso¬ 
phy was submission to some other authority than that of reason; 
while Modern Philosophy accepts reason as the only authority; 
and it was Cartesianism which brought about this decisive change. 
There would have been little merit in such an assumption of inde¬ 
pendence at a later day, after it had become the fashion; but 
it was an unprecedented step at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century. 


24 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Descartes had a method, and devoted a whole treatise to its ex¬ 
position and defence ; but it was not the distinctive feature of his 
philosophy. For this, we must look to its application, to the 
doctrines evolved from it by a clear-headed and inventive thinker. 
Speaking briefly, it was the deductive, geometric, and a priori 
method. He did not reason inductively, from facts upwards to 
laws or causes, but deductively, from first truths or self-evident 
principles downwards to observed facts. More particularly, he laid 
down four rules: (1.) To admit nothing except upon clear and cer¬ 
tain evidence. (2.) To proceed analytically, resolving each prob¬ 
lem into as' many distinct questions as possible. (3.) To consider 
all objects of inquiry in a fixed order, beginning with the simplest, 
and rising by degrees to the more complex and abstruse; (on the 
ground of this aphorism, it has been maintained, and with good 
reason, that he is the proper originator of that scheme of the 
classification of the sciences which was first developed by Comte.) 
(4.) To employ so much circumspection and exact calculation as 
to make sure that nothing essential had been omitted. Obviously 
these are rules for the conduct of investigation and proof in pure 
mathematics. There was no great merit in the mere enunciation 
of them, even at that early day. But to adhere to them with 
great closeness and fidelity in the exposition of a new theory of 
knowledge, a journey of exploration where he could be guided by 
no footmarks, since no one had preceded him, affords proof of no 
ordinary vigor and clearness of intellect. 

The first, and perhaps the most difficult, thing to be done was 
to ascertain and establish the starting-point of the inquiry ; to find 
some truth or fact which should be absolutely self-evident and un¬ 
questionable, and still be fruitful, so that all truths subsequently 
elicited might be shown to depend upon it and be proved from it 
by rigorous filiation of logic and doctrine. He needed a fulcrum 
for his lever; and the way to find it was to ascertain by actual 
experiment whether the most comprehensive skepticism could over¬ 
throw every thing, or would leave something still upright amid the 
general ruin, something which could not be doubted or denied, 
without an evident contradiction and absurdity. I resolved, he 
says, to reject as absolutely false every thing which was subject 
even to the smallest doubt. Every thing which I have learned 
came either from the senses or the intellect; and as the senses 
often deceive us, falsely reporting both the visible and tangible 
qualities of things; as we often imagine what is not, and dreams 
present mere fancies for realities; as the understanding often goes 


DESCARTES. 


25 


astray, and we blunder about even the simplest matters in geome¬ 
try; as it is supposable even that some malignant power has so got 
the control over our minds as constantly to hold up truth for false¬ 
hood, and the reverse, I will no longer believe in anything; I will 
deny the validity of mathematical evidence, and the existence of 
a God, of external objects, of my own body, and even of myself. 
Does anything remain ? Yes ! Thought. This very doubt and 
denial exist only so far as they are thought. Thought is present 
even in dreams. Error as well as truth, imagination as well as 
reality, must be thought, or they do not exist. To think the non¬ 
existence of thought itself is a manifest contradiction and ab¬ 
surdity. 

Here we have a first principle, then, and it is not only unassail¬ 
able, but fruitful. Gogito, ergo sum. The reality of the thought 
necessarily involves the existence of the thinker. Two steps, then, 
are already taken and solidly planted. If there are any truths of 
fact or concrete existence, as distinct from the mere relations of 
abstract ideas, — truths which skepticism itself cannot doubt, these 
are they. On this subject, the philosophy of the last two centuries 
and a half has not advanced an inch beyond Descartes, nor ren¬ 
dered nugatory the smallest portion of his work. On these two 
most certain of all propositions depends the certainty of all other 
affirmations that can be made. The one cannot be denied without 
self-contradiction, that is, without violating the primary axiom of 
pure thought, that all thought must be consistent with itself ; 
thought is known, because both knowledge and skepticism are 
thought. The other, my personal existence, is at once the type of 
all reality, and the measure of all certainty. The contrast be¬ 
tween the real and the apparent, as it is a relation between them, 
must have a fundamentum relationis, or a standard through which 
it can be thought. This standard cannot be found in the appar¬ 
ent, as this is the mere negation, the opposite, of the real. There 
must be, then, a standard or type of reality; and this can be noth¬ 
ing but the Ego, which thinks the relation, and without which, 
consequently, the difference between the real and the apparent 
could not even be thought. It is also the criterion and the measure 
of all certainty, as well in the apprehension of the vulgar as in the 
reasonings of the learned; for the common remark, “ I am as sure 
of it as I am of my own existence,” expresses the strongest con¬ 
viction of which the human mind is capable, and that to which all 
other assurance is referred. 

Cartesianism is the proper origin and starting-point of all Mod- 


26 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ern Philosophy, both because it first erected the standard of in¬ 
dependence of the authority of all former times aud thinkers, and 
because these two primary data of Descartes have been borrowed 
from him by all subsequent system-makers to serve as the founda¬ 
tion stones of their own doctrines. Fichte and all other proper 
Idealists or Egoists of the last two centuries found their philoso¬ 
phy upon Cogito, ergo sum. And it may fairly be added that 
Schelling, Hegel, and the whole school of those who have upheld 
the doctrine of Absolute Identity, and have endeavored therefrom 
to construct a philosophy of the Absolute, have begun with tho 
Cartesian datum of pure or blank thought, and have assumed to 
follow the equal and parallel development of such thought in two 
directions, — into object and subject, nature and spirit, matter and 
mind. 

But before commenting any further upon these primary truths, 
let us follow the subsequent evolution of the system by Descartes 
himself, in order to gain a connected idea of his philosophy as a 
whole. As yet we have not advanced beyond the internal world 
of consciousness, to which both thought and the Ego unquestion¬ 
ably belong. How shall we get beyond the Ego to the world 
outside of us, and reconstruct that trust in the testimony of the 
senses and in the deductive conclusions of the intellect which was 
swept away at the outset? The problem is ontological; how, from 
the two premises now gained, shall we demonstrate the objective 
reality of something external to ourselves, the existence of which 
may serve as a corner-stone to the whole remaining fabric of 
truth ? There is but one such corner-stone, says Descartes ; and 
that is, the necessary existence of a God, of an infinite and per¬ 
fect being, to whom, because He is perfect in wisdom and good¬ 
ness, we cannot attribute any intention to deceive his creatures. 
If his existence can be demonstrated merely from the two points 
already established, then we are justified in relying with full con¬ 
fidence on those faculties which He has given us. We can then 
trust the evidence of our senses and the conclusions of our under¬ 
standing in all cases whatsoever in which they afford us clear and 
distinct ideas of their respective objects. The veracity of God is 
the only bridge over which we can pass from a knowledge of our 
own existence to an unhesitating conviction of the reality of things 
without us and the trustworthiness of our intellectual powers. 
How can we prove the being of a God merely from the knowl¬ 
edge of our own existence and of the thoughts or ideas which are 
present to our consciousness ? 


DESCARTES. 


27 


In its first and purest form, the ontological argument for the 
existence of a God, founded on the mere idea of such a being 
which is present to our minds, may be very briefly stated. Our 
idea of God is that of an infinite and perfect being, who is self- 
existent, i. e. who exists by a necessity of his own nature; for 
thus only is He distinguished from a finite being, whose existence 
is contingent or merely possible, since it depends upon some other 
power or person foreign from itself. God alone exists per se , 
since He is causa sui — self-caused ; every other being exists per 
aliud. Necessary existence, then, is a part of the very idea of 
God; therefore He necessarily exists. Still more briefly: In the 
idea of a God are contained all the attributes of a perfect being; 
but necessary existence is one of these attributes; therefore God 
exists. 

Two other considerations were added by Descartes, when he 
was pressed with objections by his opponents; but these seem to 
amount to little more than stating the same argument over again. 
Thus, it is a greater perfection, he argues, to be present in the 
idea that we form of him, and also to exist in reality, than to be 
merely present in idea; but the idea of God includes all perfec¬ 
tions ; therefore, this perfection also, that he really exists. This 
form of the argument may be best stated in St. Anselm’s own 
words, since Descartes borrowed it from him. “ Certe id quo majus 
cogitari nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo. Si enim in solo 
jntellectu est, potest cogitari et in re, — quod majus est. Si ergo 
id quo majus cogitari non potest est in solo intellectu, id ipsum quo 
majus cogitari non potest, est quo majus cogitari potest. Sed certe 
hoc esse non potest.” Or thus: our idea of God is ens realissi- 
mum , — a being who includes all reality, or the highest kind of 
reality; then his reality is a necessary part of the mere notion of 
what he is. 

This form of the argument, which is strictly a priori, was 
adopted by Descartes not only from the necessities of the case, 
because he had nothing but ideas to reason from, but from the 
analogy of reasoning in mathematics. As the geometer, he argues, 
when he looks closely, in the very idea of a triangle finds the con¬ 
sequent fact, that the sum of its three angles is necessarily equal 
to two right angles, so in the very idea of God is contained the 
fact of his necessary existence. 

It is obvious, however, that this analogy is a very lame one. 
What the geometer discerns is an abstract truth respecting the 
relation of two ideas to each other. I have a notion of the three _ 

■UX, 00 ^ ^ ‘ * 



28 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


angles of a triangle, and another notion of two right angles; and I 
perceive that these two notions, both of which are quantitative, 
perfectly correspond, or are equal in magnitude. Such reasoning 
has nothing to do with the fact of real or concrete existence. 
Going back to the substance of the Cartesian argument a priori, 
we observe that the fallacy in it consists in substituting the phrase 
“ necessary existence ” for “ the idea of necessary existence.” It 
is perfectly correct to say, that the idea of necessary existence 
enters into our complex notion of a God. But the reality does 
not follow from the idea, any more than the reality of a winged 
horse follows from my conception of such an animal; or, still 
more pertinently, than the actual presence of a perfect circle on 
the paper before me follows from the mathematical, that is, the 
perfect, conception of such a circle, which exists in my mind, and 
which, strictly speaking, has no prototype whatever in the outward 
universe. Real existence is the very opposite of ideal existence, 
and it is therefore a contradiction in terms to affirm that the former 
is contained in the latter. 

Unable to answer this objection, Descartes took refuge in another 
form of the argument, or rather in a different argument, which is 
inductive indeed, and, as it seems to me, satisfactory, but by which 
he lost hold of every vestige of demonstrative reasoning a priori, 
and came down to the old argument from effect to cause, thus: — 

There are, he affirms, three sorts of ideas in my mind. 1. There 
are adventitious ideas, which come to me from without, through 
the agency of the senses. 2. There are factitious ideas, con¬ 
structed by myself out of the materials furnished by sense. 3. 
There are those which are native-born, original, or innate. Now 
among the ideas in my mind I find one of God, understanding 
thereby an infinite and eternal substance, immovable, independent, 
omniscient, and omnipotent, by whom I and all things that exist 
were created. Whence came this idea ? Certainly not from the 
senses. These take cognizance only of what is finite, limited, im¬ 
perfect, and contingent. The ideas in my mind are images or 
pictures, which may want something of the perfection that is in 
their archetype, but certainly cannot go beyond the magnitude and 
excellence of their cause. Moreover, it did not rise unexpectedly, 
creating a feeling of novelty or surprise, as the ideas of external 
things do when they strike upon my senses for the first time. 
Neither was it made by my own agency, for I can neither enlarge 
nor diminish it: — not the former, for it is infinite, and therefore 
eannot be increased; not the latter, since an idea of perfection 


DESCARTES. 


29 


cannot be lessened, but can only be removed and another idea be 
substituted in its place. As the idea did not come from the senses, 
then, and is not factitious, it must be innate; it bears the artificer’s 
own stamp put upon his work to show who made it. In fine, to 
adopt his own language, “ when I turn my attention inward upon 
myself, I perceive that I am a being incomplete, dependent upon 
another, and reaching after something higher and better than my 
present state; and that He, on whom I depend, enjoys all the per¬ 
fections towards which I only aspire,— enjoys them not merely 
potentially and to an indefinite extent, but in very truth and to an 
infinite degree. Now my nature could not be what it is, that is, 
could not possess this innate conception of the Deity, unless he 
actually existed, and possessed all those attributes which my-^ 
thoughts can in no wise picture forth or comprehend, and marked 
by no defects.” 

Now we are not concerned with this argument in its theological, 
but only in its philosophical aspect, as portion of a demonstrated 
system of knowledge, or as a means of accrediting the human fac¬ 
ulties, and of thereby rising from universal doubt to a successful 
search after truth. As such, it cannot be demonstrative and a 
priori, since matters of fact, or of actual concrete existence, can 
be made known only by direct intuition, or by reasoning from 
probable evidence, but cannot be demonstrated. We do know from 
direct intuition the existence of thought, and of our own person¬ 
ality or self. But surely we have no intuitive knowledge of the 
Divine existence; and any attempt to demonstrate it must be a 
failure, since there is no passage from an idea to a reality except 
by unfounded assumptions, — by smuggling into the premises facts 
not yet proved, or judgments which we have no right to consider 
' as axiomatic. Descartes did not consider how difficult it is to 
revoke all our past opinions into doubt, and to present the mind 
as a tabula rasa for the reception of fresh and well accredited 
truth. To adopt his own language, it is not so easy to cancel all 
our preconceived beliefs as it is to burn one’s own house down. 
Granting even the idea to be innate, it does not follow that God 
implanted it in our minds, but only that some cause, we know not 
what, must have placed it there; and not even this can be postu¬ 
lated, unless we assume the validity of reasoning from effect to 
cause, a principle which Descartes had not yet demonstrated, nor 
even noticed. As an inductive argument from experience, this 
reasoning affords us all the assurance that we need of the reality**' 
of the Divine existence, the evidence being of the same nature as 


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30 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 





that by which we are convinced that all men are mortal. It is 
not, and it cannot be demonstrated, that I must die; but any one 
would be insane who should refuse to believe it. Descartes prom¬ 
ised to lead us up to the fundamental truth of all religion by a 
new path, — to “nobly take the high, priori road and reason down¬ 
wards ; ” but after a little digression he conducts us back again to 
the old travelled way, where alone we can find sure footing, and 
reasons upward from effect to cause. 

Indeed, the great defect of the Cartesian philosophy is, that it 
takes little notice of the idea of Cause, and does not disentangle or 
present to distinct consciousness the great Law of Causality, though 
the whole system unconsciously presupposes the validity of this 
principle, not only as a law of thought, but also as a law of things. 
Descartes saw only half of what Mr. Mansel calls the great meta¬ 
physical problem, “ What is the origin and import of these two 
necessary conceptions, Substance as distinct from phenomenon, 
Cause as distinct from change; or rather, of these two different 
sides of one and the same conception, for Cause is but Substance in 
operation, as Substance is but Cause resting after its labor.” A 
Cause must be a Substanc^, or being in energy ; but a Substance is 
not necessarily, or always, an active Cause; and, in fact, is never 
so except so far as it is, at least for the time, endowed with power, 
or has power as one of its attributes. Descartes confounded the 
two altogether, or at most, misled in spite of himself by the Scho¬ 
lastic philosophy, he introduced only the conception of immanent 
cause, which, properly speaking, is no cause at all. In a certain 
sense, a Substance is the Cause of its attributes, inasmuch as it is a 
condition or prerequisite of the manifestation of those attributes. 
But as such, it is a dead, or inbiding (indwelling, immanent,) Cause, 
operating only on itself, and not a living and conscious energy 
going forth beyond its seat (transeunt), and so operating on other 
things ab extra . Thus, iron is an immanent cause of its own 
hardness and malleability, whilst mind or self is a transeunt cause, 
going out beyond itself in volitions, and subduing matter to its 
own will. Substance and attribute are as indissolubly united as 
matter and form, since the one cannot even be conceived without 
the other; but the only Cause which we directly know , the human 
will, is often dormant, and only rouses itself into activity when it 
sees occasion. 

Observe also how Descartes expresses himself on this subject, 
for in these expressions are found the germs which Spinoza soon 
expanded into a demonstrated system of Pantheism. We conceive 





C 


i 


DESCARTES. 


31 


Substance, he says, as existing per se ; i. e., which has need of noth¬ 
ing else than itself in order to exist. Strictly speaking, therefore, 
God only is such a substance; for there is no created thing, he 
maintains, which can exist a moment without being upheld and 
preserved by his power. Hence he asserts that creation is not a 
single act, but a continuous exertion of divine agency, without 
which everything would instantly lapse into the nothingness whence 
it was drawn. Then the name Substance can be applied only in a 
secondary and derivative sense to any created thing whatever ; we 
mean, he says, that it has no need of anything else than the 
ordinary Divine assistance in order to continue in being. 

Evidently here is a confusion of the relation between Substance 
and Attribute with that between Cause and Effect. In the former, 
we say that the Attribute exists only in and through the Substance 
in which it inheres, and is thus absolutely dependent upon it; 
while the Substance, though it is manifested to us only through its 
phenomena, i. e., its Attributes, is yet, as their substratum, really 
independent of any one of them, and would continue to be though 
it were not. At any rate, the relation between them is continuous 
and perpetual, not implying either change, activity, or power. In 
the latter, the effect begins to exist, as it is only change , an event, 
which requires a cause; and even then the effect does not exist 




only in and through the cause, but is produced by it; when, being v 
once created, it continues to be without further exertion of power, 
until a subsequent change requires another cause. To assume 
that the relation of creatures to a Creator is the same as that of 
Attributes to a Substance, is to negative any change whatsoever, and 
thereby to lead inevitably to Pantheism; but it is a wholly un¬ 
founded assumption. 

Yet this doctrine of continuous creation occupies a very con¬ 
spicuous place in the Cartesian system of metaphysics. The chief 
argument which is urged in its favor is founded upon the mutual 
independence of all the parts, infinite in number, which constitute 
a given portion of time. As no one moment has. any connection 
whatever with the one which immediately precedes or follows it, 
beyond the fact of mere succession, — as one comes after the other 
without being in any way tied or fastened to that other, — so it by 
no means follows, from the fact that I exist at the present moment, 
that I must continue to exist the moment afterwards. If I had 
this power of continuing myself in existence, I should know it, I 
ihould think it, for I am a being that thinks. But I do not know 
fi, I do not think it; then I do not possess it, and I am constantly 


C 


.1 



32 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


dependent upon some being distinct from myself. My preserva¬ 
tion, then, is but a continual repetition of the act which created 
me ; and the fact of my duration, just as much as the fact of my 
existence, proves the being of a God. He even avails himself, for 
the purposes of this argument, of the old Scholastic distinction be¬ 
tween a cause secundum fieri and a cause secundum esse. In the 
case of the former, which is such a cause as an architect is of a 
house, or a printer of a book, there is no proper creation, but only 
a new arrangement of preexisting materials; therefore the effect 
endures after the cause secundum fieri has ceased to operate. But 
a cause secundum esse really creates, and if it did not continue iu 
action, the effect would instantly disappear. Such is the relation 
of the sun to light, and such the relation of God to the universe. 
If the sun were struck out of the heavens, all would immediately 
become dark. 

Although every attribute, continues Descartes, is sufficient to 
manifest or make known the substance in which it inheres, still 
there is one attribute in each which constitutes the nature and 
essence of its substance, and on which all the other attributes de¬ 
pend. Thus, extension constitutes the essence of every corporeal, 
as thought forms the essence of every thinking thing; since every 
other attribute of body presupposes extension and is dependent 
upon it; and in like manner memory, imagination, perception, 
affirmation, and denial are only different modes of thought. There 
is no color except of an extended surface, no shape or figure ex¬ 
cept of that which has length and breadth, no movement except 
of an extended thing in an extended space. Thus, also, sentiment, 
feeling, and will exist only in a being who thinks, and cannot even 
be conceived except through thought. 

Here the bias of the mathematician shows itself. To the geom¬ 
eter, every property of a circle or a triangle is a necessary conse¬ 
quence of that one genetic property or attribute which forms the 
definition of a circle or triangle, and can be deduced from it by 
strict demonstrative reasoning. In like manner, we may believe 
that, among all the attributes of any particular substance, there is 
some one which is primitive, essential, and genetic of all the rest. 
But there is no proof that there is any one thus genetic of the 
others; and if there were, only omnipotence could know which it 
is. Extension, it is true, is necessary to body, which cannot even' 
be conceived to exist without it; but so also is impenetrability. 
And neither of these is genetic of the other, nor of any of the 
remaining attributes of matter. In like manner, thought is neces- 


DESCARTES. 


33 


sary to mind, for that would not be mind which is not capable of 
thought. But thought is not genetic of perception, feeling, or will, 
neither of which can be deduced from it a priori or by demonstra¬ 
tive reasoning. Locke properly distinguishes between the Real 
and the Nominal Essences of things. The former, he says, is the 
real internal constitution of things, on which all their discoverable 
qualities depend. “ This is the proper original signification of the 
word, essentia, in its primary notation, signifying, properly, being” 
In substances it is unknown, being evidently beyond the reach of 
the human faculties, which can take cognizance only of the phe¬ 
nomena of things. The Nominal Essence depends not on the real 
constitution of things, since this is undiscoverable, but on the arti¬ 
ficial constitution of genera and species, i. e., on the arbitrary classi¬ 
fication of things which we make for our own convenience, and to 
this the name is attached. A change of the Real Essence would 
change all the attributes or properties of the thing, as these de¬ 
pend upon it. But a change of the Nominal Essence would alter 
only our classification of them; it would be only changing the 
significance of names. But while this is so in respect to substances 
or real things, the case is different with simple ideas and modes, — 
the figures in geometry, for instance, or the numbers in arithmetic; 
— for in respect to these, the Real and the Nominal Essences coin¬ 
cide. Locke’s whole discussion of this subject, contained in his 
chapter on General Terms, is admirable. It was the best explica¬ 
tion for the time of the questions lying at the root of the old dis¬ 
pute between Nominalism and Realism, a controversy which has 
occupied the schools ever since the birthtime of philosophy. 

Against those opponents of his system who maintained that we 
have no clear idea of the Infinite, and that the being of a God 
cannot safely be inferred from the vague and confused notion 
which we have of it, Descartes stoutly argued : “ On the contrary, 
the idea of the Infinite is very clear and very distinct, since all that 
my mind clearly and distinctly conceives as real and true, or as 
having any perfection, is wholly wrapped up and contained in this 
idea.” He denies also that it is only a negative idea made up by 
a negation of the finite, just as rest and darkness are only the 
negation of motion and light. “ On the contrary, I plainly see that 
there is more reality in an infinite substance than in a finite one, 
since to conceive the latter, we must take away something from our 
idea of the former, and so far limit and restrict it. Hence, in some 
way, my mind must conceive the Infinite before it can have any 
notion of the finite.” 

* 3 


34 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Having finished this brief review of the leading doctrines in the 
philosophy of Descartes, in which I have selected those which 
have had most influence on the subsequent course of speculation, 
let us go back for a moment to the initial stage of his system. 

“ I think, therefore I am,” says Descartes. But it was soon 
objected that this is a begging of the question ; for the conclusion 
here is not an inference from the premise, but is contained, being 
already assumed, in that premise. Gogito is equivalent to ego sum 
cogitans. Very true, answered Descartes; that is precisely what 
I mean. Instead of ergo, substitute scilicet, or in French, c'est a 
dire ; I think, that is to say, I am. Because the existence of the 
thought involves and carries along with it the existence of the 
thinking being, you cannot dispute the reality of the latter with¬ 
out also denying the consciousness of thought itself, and thereby 
denying your own denial; since that denial itself is thought. My 
original statement was not argumentative, but explicative. Per¬ 
sonal existence, the reality of the Ego, is not a truth of inference, 
or a fact resting upon circumstantial evidence ; it is an immediate 
intuition, — a fact of internal experience, — a primary datum of 
consciousness. This is Locke’s own doctrine, though it is the last 
that would be expected of him according to the common notion 
that his system traces the origin of all our knowledge to sensation. 
It may even be doubted whether the relation of the thinker to the 
thought is properly expressed as that of a substance to its attri¬ 
butes ; it is rather that of an agent to his actions; so that to as¬ 
sert the reality of the thought, and deny that of the thinker, is as 
absurd as to affirm motion, and yet deny that anything is moved. 
Or to take an illustration from geometry, parallelism is impossible, 
if there are not two lines or surfaces to be parallel. Just so, con¬ 
scious thought — that is, known thought — is impossible except 
somebody knows it. And this is what Descartes means; cogito , 
ergo sum, is not an enthymeme, or imperfect syllogism, as many 
have imagined; it is the statement of a fact, an intuition expressed 
in language. 

I dwell upon this point, because it is the fashion nowadays, 
under the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, to affirm that 
an ontology, or doctrine of real being, is impossible, all our knowl¬ 
edge being limited to phenomena, or apparent being. And the 
history of all the attempts that have been made for the last three 
thousand years demonstrates at least as much as this, that the pos¬ 
sibility of ontological science depends on the doctrine of intui¬ 
tive knowledge of the Ego as real and causative existence, and 


DESCARTES. 35 

not merely as a substance inferred from the presence of its attri¬ 
butes. 

Descartes is also entitled to credit for being the first to point 
out with great clearness the radical difference between the Ego, 
or self, and corporeal substance, that is, between mind and matter. 
Body, of its own nature, he argues, is always divisible ; while 
mind is entirely indivisible. For when I consider myself merely 
as a being that thinks, I cannot find in myself any distinction of 
parts ; for I know and conceive myself very clearly as an exist¬ 
ence which is absolutely one and entire. And although my whole 
mind seems to be united to my whole body, — being all in every 
part of it, — yet when a foot, an arm, or any other part has been 
cut off from my body, I know very well that nothing has thereby 
been taken away from my mind, or proper self, since it remains 
entire. Neither can the faculties of will, feeling, conception, and 
the like, properly be called parts or portions of my mind ; for it is 
the whole mind or self which wills, the whole mind which feels, 
conceives, etc. These are not so much distinct faculties, as differ¬ 
ent modes of operation of one and the same power or active sub¬ 
stance. Now it is just the contrary with corporeal and extended 
things ; for I cannot imagine any one of these, however small it 
may be, which I cannot easily, through my thought, if not in 
reality, separate into many parts, so that I know it to be divisible. 
And this is enough to prove to me that the mind or soul of man 
is essentially different from material substance. 

It appears, moreover, that thought is not in any wise dependent 
upon body ; for the thought continues to exist after I have already 
supposed the annihilation or non-existence of body. It is evident, 
also, that we have even a clearer conception of what mind is, than 
of what body is ; for the two have not a single attribute in com¬ 
mon, every property of body presupposing extension, while every 
function and act of mind presupposes thought, which we cannot 
even imagine to be extended. Now I clearly conceive what these 
mental acts and functions are, and that they are independent of 
extension, which enters into or constitutes every attribute of body. 
In vain does one excite his imagination in order to see if he is not 
something more, or something other, than thought. “ Nothing of 
what the imagination gives us,” he says, “ belongs to that knowl¬ 
edge which we have of ourselves; and in order to know its own 
nature, the mind must wholly give up the exercise of imagination.” 
r< I am not that assemblage of limbs which is called the human 
body ; I am not a subtile and penetrating air diffused through all 





36 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


these limbs; I am not a wind, a breath, a vapor, or anything 
which I can imagine ; for I have already supposed all these things 
to cease to exist; yet in spite of that supposition, I do not find 
that I cease to exist as a thinking being.” 

So far, Descartes is unquestionably right, and his doctrine rests 
upon as firm a basis as the first truths of geometry. But he al¬ 
lowed the discussion to carry him too far, when he so far identifies 
the action with the agent, or the attribute with the substance, as 
to affirm that the very essence of the Ego consists in thought, so 
that to cease to think would be to cease to exist. In point of 
fact, I believe with him, that the soul always does think; but this 
is not maintaining that it always must think, else it would no 
longer be. This is the Cartesian doctrine, which to many seems 
paradoxical, and was stoutly denied by Locke; that even in pro¬ 
found sleep, in a fainting fit or swoon, the soul cannot intermit its 
activity, which is its life. The thought may be unconscious, or 
may be forgotten the moment afterwards ; but the actual cessation 
of thought, though but for one moment, would be, according to 
Descartes, not merely death, but annihilation. Awakening would 
be the creation of a new life, not the restoration of the old one. 

A more important consequence of this identification of personal 
existence with thought is, that we thereby attribute to the former 
the changeableness, the plurality, the perpetual flux, which charac¬ 
terize the latter. If my thought is myself, then I am not the 
same self at any two successive moments; and thus another car¬ 
dinal doctrine of the Cartesian system falls to the ground. 

Cartesianism was first published to the world in the author’s 
“ Discourse upon Method,” printed in 1637. In this work, how¬ 
ever, the system is very briefly and imperfectly sketched out, much 
space being given to some autobiographical details, in which he 
describes the experiences of his earlier life, and the processes of 
thought which led to the formation of his opinions, and which he 
proposes as general rules for the search after truth. In 1644 he 
published his “ Principles of Philosophy,” in four books, the first 
of which sets forth a complete and well digested summary of his 
metaphysical system, the other three being devoted to physics. 
This arrangement results from his doctrine that Philosophy is the 
whole of science, and may be conceived as a tree, of which meta¬ 
physics are the roots, while physics are the trunk, and the other 
sciences are the branches. The first book of these Principles may 
be recommended to those who seek for a succinct, and at the same 
time, full and orderly exposition of his system. In 1641, ap- 




t 






DESCARTES. 


37 


peared his “ Metaphysical Meditations,” in which his philosophy is 
further worked out and elaborated, with some modifications of those 
points which were most liable to objection. This was his favorite 
work; he had submitted it in manuscript to the most eminent 
thinkers and learned men in Europe for their criticism; and a 
summary of their objections, with his answers to them, was ap¬ 
pended to the later editions. This step was an additional means 
of securing for his philosophy the notice, consideration, and in¬ 
fluence which it soon acquired throughout Europe. In purely 
speculative science, it was far the most important work of the 
age ; it shaped and modified the whole course of European thought 
for more than a century. Among the correspondents to whom it 
was submitted, and whose objections, with the replies to them, 
were subsequently published, were Cater, Mersenne, Arnauld, 
Gassendi, and Hobbes. The correspondence was conducted in 
good taste and temper, and with great ability, the whole forming 
one of the most interesting discussions of purely metaphysical sub¬ 
jects that have appeared in modern times. 


CHAPTER III. 


Innate Ideas. — The Idea of God in the Mind of Man. 

In considering the philosophy of Descartes, two important sub¬ 
jects came into view which deserve a more thorough examination 
than it was possible to give them in the last chapter; I mean the 
questions respecting innate knowledge, and the idea of God in the 
human soul. Under the authority of Locke, who, in his “ Essay on 
Human Understanding,” argued stoutly against Cartesianism, the 
theory of the empiricists in respect to both of these subjects has 
always been the predominant one on English ground, while the 
opposite doctrine has prevailed both in France and Germany, under 
the influence of Descartes and Leibnitz. 

The question respecting the origin of knowledge is one that has 
been discussed during every period in the history of abstract 
science. Even at the present day, in all countries where philoso¬ 
phy has any disciples, it is still debated with as fresh an interest, 
and as keen a use of all the weapons of dialectics, as when it was 
first mooted in the schools of Greece nearly three thousand years 
ago. The question is one of permanent and engrossing interest, 
because on the answer to it depend the opinions that we may enter¬ 
tain on subjects of the gravest moment, not only in psychology and 
metaphysics, but in theology and physical science. What are the 
natural and original characteristics of the human mind at the mo¬ 
ment of its creation, before it began to be modified and informed 
by experience? Was it a mere tabula rasa —a blank sheet of 
white paper — a clean slate, on which any characters whatever 
might be impressed by future events, having no inborn aptitude or 
predisposition for any one impression rather than for any other ? 
Or had this blank been already touched by a Divine hand, — written 
all over, in fact, with the hieroglyphics of eternal and necessary 
truths,— invisible indeed at first, but invariably brought out into 
clear vision through subsequent experience, though such experience 
could no more have first impressed these characters, than the vapor- 
bath of iodine could originally have traced the sun-picture which it 


INNATE IDEAS. 


39 


first reveals ? Have we any Innate Ideas, or are the limits of our 
external senses also the boundaries of our knowledge, so that every 
expression in our vocabulary which cannot find an external and 
sensible object, to which it can thus establish its affinity, is destitute 
of any real significance ? Tell me your answer to these questions, 
and I will tell you the leading features of your whole creed in 
science, philosophy, and religion. 

Plato believed in the preexistence of the soul, and hence that 
most of the glimpses of the higher truths of science and philosophy, 
which we obtain in this our mortal life, are but vague and shadowy 
recollections of the eternal verities of which we had immediate 
vision in the distant realms of spirit that we have left. Our mode of 
apprehending ideas and general truths, according to him, is neither 
more nor less than the recollecting of those things which the soul 
formerly saw when it sojourned with the gods, and, disregarding 
what we now call phenomenal or apparent things, applied itself to 
the apprehension of pure being — to ovtws ov. But I need not 
spend words on the explanation of a theory which Wordsworth has 
expounded with so much splendor of diction and imagery in his 
immortal ode. 

“ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: — 

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God who is our home. 

Yet not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise ; 

But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings ; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized ; 

High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 

But for those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 

Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 

. . truths that wake 

To perish never, 

Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor 
Can utterly abolish or destroy.” 

That very learned and devout theologians consider this doctrine 


40 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


to be perfectly consistent with the teachings of Christianity, is 
proved by the following quotation from the “ Lectures on Poetry,” 
delivered at the University of Oxford by the amiable and pious 
Dr. Keble, the associate and friend of Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman, 
and, like them, one of the leaders of the Tractarian party in the 
English church. After the fashion at Oxford in the early part of 
this century, his lectures were delivered and published in Latin, so 
that I must cite only my own bald and feeble version of them into 
English. 

“ Strange if we should not sometimes be tempted to believe the 
doctrine of Pythagoras, who held that our souls did not then first 
begin to be when we were born into this world, but rather that, 
coming from some unknown distant region, they then first assumed 
each a body of its own; nor had they been so steeped in the waters 
of Lethe, but that there still lingered in them, as it were, some 
tang and relish of their former state, by what sense now perceived 
I know not, but yet somehow at happy moments really cognized. 
And thus are the memories of childhood flavored with their well 
known exquisite delight only because of some faint sense yet 
abiding in them of man’s earlier abode nearer to God.” 

Aristotle, the personification of cold, abstract thought, rejected 
the whole of Plato’s mystic doctrine of Ideas, argued stoutly 
against it, and established positive science on the basis of empiri¬ 
cism. In one of his treatises, we find a precise statement of that 
doctrine which has since been so pithily expressed in the famous 
Latin adage, nihil est in intellectu quod nonfuit prius in sensu. 
The Schoolmen were divided on the subject, the more mystical and 
devout among them following Plato’s guidance, especially in main¬ 
taining the innateness of the idea of God to the soul of man, while 
their more subtle analysts and logicians adopted the doctrine of 
Aristotle, that all our knowledge has its origin in experience. 

If the doctrine of Innate Ideas appears to border too closely 
upon the realms of mysticism and fanciful speculation, to be al¬ 
lied rather to the poetical dreams of a Plato or a Wordsworth than 
to the patient investigations of an earnest seeker after truth, we 
have only to remember that Descartes and Leibnitz were far the 
greatest mathematicians of their times, — among the greatest, in¬ 
deed, of all time ; the discovery of analytic geometry by the former 
being surpassed in importance and brilliancy only by the inven¬ 
tion of the differential and integral calculus, which was made 
simultaneously by Newton and Leibnitz. Thus proficient in the 
most rigorous of all sciences, they were the last persons in the 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE MIND OF MAN. 41 

world to amuse themselves with building up metaphysical fancies 
in the clouds. 

In further elucidation of the leading doctrine, the innateness of 
the idea of God to the soul of man, let me present the same dogma 
as set forth and defended by one of the ablest thinkers and most 
eloquent writers of our own day, — I mean Cardinal Manning, 
formerly of the English, now of the Romish church. 

“ The first relation of reason to revelation,” he observes, “ is to 
receive it by intellectual apprehension. It is like the relation of 
the eye to sight. There are, I may say, two kinds of sight, the 
passive and the active ; that is, in plain words' there is a differ¬ 
ence between seeing and looking. In the former, the will is 
quiescent; in the latter, it is in activity. We see a thousand 
things, when we look at only one; we see the light, even when we 
do not fix the eye upon any particular object by an act of the 
will.” This difference, I may further remark, between sensa¬ 
tion alone, and sensation accompanied by the attention that is 
induced by effort and directed by will, can be expressed better 
in French, where there are different words to express these sep¬ 
arate acts. “ Partout ,” says Laromiguiere, “ on voit, et Von re¬ 
garde ; on entend, et Von Scoute ; on sent, et Von flaire; on goute, 
et Von savoure” “ So the intellect is both active and passive. 
And the intellect must first be in some degree passively replen¬ 
ished or illuminated by an object, before it can actively apply itself 
to it.” 

Perhaps the most striking instance of seeing more than we look 
at, or attend to, is afforded by every person’s experience on first 
opening a book. Undoubtedly we see at once the whole page, if 
it be not a very large one, the entire image of it being impressed 
at once on the retina of the eye; and so distinctly also, that we 
can often tell by a single glance, or in one or two seconds of time, 
whether the particular word or sentence, which we are in search 
of, is contained on that page or not. But in order fairly to read 
that page, and to take in or comprehend the full sense of what it 
contains, especially if it be abstruse and novel matter, two or three 
minutes are necessary; for we must successively look at, and at¬ 
tend to, not only every word, but every letter, on that page; and 
the only wonder is, how we can do this so quickly. 

Just so may we consider that Innate Ideas are actually present 
io the mind. They are really there, and so to speak, truly visible 
to the inner sense. But unless some experience, suggestion, or 
instruction calls our attention to them, we do not look at them, 
and consequently they are to us as if they were not. 


42 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


“ Though the existence of God may be proved by reason and 
from lights of the natural order, it is certain that the knowledge 
of God’s existence anticipated all such reasoning. The theism of 
the world was not a discovery. Mankind possessed it by primeval 
revelation, were penetrated and pervaded by it, before any one 
doubted of it; and reasoning did not precede, but followed the 
doubt. Theists came before philosophers, and Theism before 
Atheism, or even a doubt about the existence of God. St. Paul 
says, * the invisible things of him from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, 
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without 
excuse.’ ” 

This passage, as it seems to me, throws light on the manner in 
which a priori knowledge, or Innate Ideas, exist in the mind, 
before they are developed by experience or distinctly recognized 
and explicated by conscious exertion of the intellect. Certainly 
we have reason to believe that the ideas of a Divinity, of space, of 
time, of efficient causation, of substance, of right and wrong, and 
some others, are truly a priori , or in some way, innate; that is, 
if not absolutely born with us, they are native to the mind, being 
inwrought into its inmost structure, and necessary in order to form 
the very experience which appears to develop them: so that, when 
first distinctly taught to us by others, they are not merely cognized 
as Dew, but recognized as old and familiar truths, portions of the 
very framework of our mental being. You have not learned from 
a book, nobody ever taught you, or can teach you, what time and 
space are ; or that they are indestructible ; that they exist without 
break or interval, in absolute and indivisible continuity, an un¬ 
seamed garment without possible rent or division ; and that they 
are infinite in the strictest sense of this term. Neither were they 
received from the senses, for they are altogether imperceptible to 
sense. Yet no one is ignorant of these ideas or truths, or doubts 
their reality, or needs to be convinced that it is reasonable to 
believe in them. No metaphysician can teach you one jot more 
about them than what you know already, — than what you have 
always known. He can only induce you to look at them steadily 
and inquiringly, instead of being content merely with passively 
seeing them. He can help you to bring them out into clearer 
consciousness, and to state in a fuller and more definite manner the 
conclusions respecting them which your own minds instinctively 
and necessarily suggest, and which admit of no more doubt or 
question than the axioms of geometry or the truths of the multi¬ 
plication table. 


INNATE IDEAS. 


43 


To Leibnitz belongs the credit of being the first to point out and 
establish these two criteria, or tests and proofs, of Innate Ideas, to 
wit, universality and necessity. Whatever is universally true, true 
not merely so far as my experience, or as the experience of the 
whole human race, has gone, but true everywhere and at all times, 
true under all circumstances and conditions, and without any excep¬ 
tions or limitations whatsoever, — that is an innate truth, or one 
which had its origin in the soul itself, and was not impressed upon 
us through the senses, or from the world without. Again, whatever 
is necessarily and absolutely true, — that is, so true that neither 
you nor I can even imagine it to be false under any circumstances 
whatever,—that also is innate, or had its origin in the very consti¬ 
tution of the mind. Now these two criteria are found always to go 
together, each involving the other, so that, in fact, they coincide 
and form but a single test. Whatever cognition is necessary must, 
for that very reason, be universal; and, in like manner, it could 
not be absolutely universal, if it were not also necessary. And the 
number of truths is not small which possess these two decisive 
characteristics; whole sciences are made up of them alone. All 
the truths of pure Logic, pure Mathematics, and pure Metaphysics 
are of this character. For instances, take from Logic what is called 
the law of Excluded Middle, — either A is B, or A is not B; — of 
these two contradictory propositions one must be true, the other 
must be false, and no third judgment, no compromise or half-way 
truth between them, is conceivable or possible. From Mathematics, 
take the geometrical theorem, that a tangent to a circle must be 
perpendicular to the radius drawn to the point of contact. From 
Metaphysics, take these truths, that space is indestructible, even in 
thought; and that it is necessarily continuous, its parts being in¬ 
separable from each other, and also immovable. Are not these 
assertions, and all others like them, both universally and neces¬ 
sarily true ? Can you even imagine the contradictory of them to 
be true? Do they not conform to the proper definition of knowl¬ 
edge, that we are irresistibly convinced of their truth on perfectly 
satisfactory evidence, so that we do not merely believe, but we know , 
that they are true? Would any experience, any number of experi¬ 
ments, any actual measurements, for instance, of the angle between 
a tangent and its radius, showing it in each case to be equal to a 
right angle, give you the unhesitating conviction of their truth 
which you now possess ? Contrast them with a fact of experience 
vesting on the largest possible amount of merely empirical evi¬ 
dence. It is a fact confirmed by the daily united experience of 


44 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the whole human race ever since the creation of animal life, that, 
everywhere within the tropics and the two temperate zones of this 
globe, daylight and darkness "have always succeeded each other 
within every twenty-four hours. And yet no one has the slightest 
difficulty in conceiving or imagining that the sun should not rise 
to-morrow — that the miracle attributed to Joshua should be re¬ 
peated— that daylight should last continuously more than one day. 
If not, then there is a broad and impassable distinction between 
empirical and contingent truths on the one hand, and necessary 
cognitions a priori on the other. 

And yet it is a fact that most of these necessary and universal 
truths, whether in logic, metaphysics, or mathematics, were prob¬ 
ably first learned by you when you first studied these sciences, 
perhaps after you were twenty years old. But what of that ? 
When you learned them, did you accept them as true merely be¬ 
cause the book, or your teacher, said so, or did the instruction so 
received merely direct your attention towards, and bring out into 
distinct consciousness, what was already implicitly in your mind, 
and what was then first recognized or known over again, as resting 
on its own evidence, shining by its own light, far down in the in¬ 
most recesses of your intellect? I admit that the human mind 
may be fairly considered as a dark chamber, into which the light of 
experience must be introduced before we can read what is already 
written on its walls, and which, once read , are — 

“ truths that wake, 

To perish never, 

Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor 

Can utterly abolish or destroy.” 

All I maintain is, that the illuminating rays did not write the in¬ 
scription, but only enabled us to find it there and read it. The 
innateness of a truth does not refer to the time, but to the place , of 
its origin. The question is’ not whether it was already with us in 
our callow infancy, but whether it had its source within or without, 
— whether it is native to the soul, spontaneous and inwrought in its 
inmost being, or adventitious and foreign, a communication from 
the senses. To recur to Cardinal Manning’s distinction, though 
the book or the teacher first taught us where to look for it, yet 
when once perceived we immediately recognize and accept it, and 
know that it has been within our reach, that we have in a certain 
sense been seeing it all our lives. If you will accept a semi-ludi¬ 
crous illustration, we do not cut our wisdom teeth till about eighteen 
years of age ; and yet they do not come to us from without by any 


INNATE IDEAS. 


45 


human art of dentistry, but they were preformed in the original 
constitution of our bodies, and long afterwards first brought out to 
use and sight when needed. 

The more we think of it, the more that doctrine of Leibnitz, 
which appears so wild and fanciful at first, that every Monad has in 
it from its first creation an infinite number of confused unconscious 
perceptions; and that these, in the successive stages of its being, 
are slowly evolved from each other in regular order, and so rise 
into consciousness, not through any contact or impulse from things 
without, though such contact or impulse furnishes the occasion on 
which they rise, but only through the Monad’s, or soul’s, own inter¬ 
nal law of development, — the more, I say, this doctrine appears 
plausible and credible. Of course, these perceptions appear novel 
or first created when we first become conscious of them; but on this 
theory, like the wisdom teeth, they preexisted in us from the be¬ 
ginning, though dim and unconscious, “ shadowy recollections,” 

“Fallings from us, vanishings, 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized.” 

Many persons are not infrequently troubled, on first reading 
some interesting passage in a book, first learning some truth, or 
striking into some novel vein of thought, with an indistinct con¬ 
sciousness that it is not entirely novel, — that they have somewhere 
read or thought the same thing before. I think, also, we must be 
struck with some analogy between the proper mental action of 
human beings and the instincts of brutes. Why should all the 
knowledge or skill— call it what you please — of the bird, the bee, 
or the spider be unquestionably innate, or prior to experience, 
6ince it is manifested before the creature is a day, or even an hour, 
old, while man is compelled to learn every lesson from the slow 
and imperfect teachings of experience ? The Baltimore oriole 
weaves its curious “ pendent nest and procreant cradle; ” the bee 
constructs its marvellous geometric cell; the spider invents, and 
spins from its own bowels, its ingenious trap for flies,—all without 
any instruction, with no ^guiding pattern or example, before any 
possible opportunity for observation or experiment, and they make 
no mistakes. Why, then, should it be thought incredible, that 
the human mind learns its lessons so easily and so well only be¬ 
cause they are really now learned not for the first time, because 
they were dimly set forth, faintly inscribed on the tablets of mem¬ 
ory, when that mind was first constituted; and thus, that what we 
Call learning is in fact reminiscence ? 



46 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 



In further illustration of this doctrine, I borrow, from his criti¬ 
cism of Locke’s theory of knowledge, Cousin’s lucid distinction be¬ 
tween the logical and the chronological order of our ideas. In the 
order of time, indeed, the child learus what body is before he comes 
to know extension or space; and he also has experience of succes¬ 
sion , that is, of one thought coming after another, before he forms 
the abstract idea of time. But in the logical order, this precedence 
is reversed; that which is the logical condition or prerequisite must 
precede that of which it is the condition, just as we must conceive 
the cause to be antecedent to the effect, though, practically, the two 
are simultaneous. Extension is an essential attribute of body; and 
thus I could not know body to be body, if the idea of space were 
not already in my mind, if it did. not exist there a priori. In like 
manner, time is a logical condition or prerequisite of succession, 
since there cannot be succession if there be not time in which this 
succession may take place. Logically, then, the idea of time must 
precede the conception of .'fore and after , which is the essence of 
succession. 

Leibnitz himself remarks: ‘ I do not maintain that Innate Ideas 
are inscribed in the mind in such wise that one can read them 
there, as it were, ad aperturam libri — on first opening the book — 
just as the edict of the praetor could be read upon his album, with¬ 
out pains and without research; but only that one can discover them 
there by dint of attention, occasions for which are furnished by the 
senses.” Making experiments in individual cases serves to confirm 
these primitive truths of the intellect, just as we prove a sum in 
arithmetic, the better to avoid error when the calculation is long. 
“ I have compared the mind,” he adds, “rather to a block of marble 
which has veins marked out in it, than to a block which is homoge¬ 
neous and pure throughout, corresponding to the tabula rasa of 
Locke and his followers. In the latter case, the truths would be 
in us only as a statue of Hercules is in any block which is large 
enough to contain it, the marble being indifferent to receive this 
shape or any other. But if there were veins in the stone, which 
gave the outline of this statue rather than of any other figure, then 
it might be said that Hercules was in some sense innate in the 
marble, though the chisel were necessary to find him there by cut¬ 
ting off the superfluities.” Often, as in attempts to remember what 
has been partially forgotten, we know that truths and ideas are 
actually present in the mind, though they cannot be discovered and 
brought into distinct consciousness except by attention and repeated 
effort. “ Hence, to the well known adage of Aristotle, nihil est in 


INNATE IDEAS. 


47 


intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu, I have added this qualifica¬ 
tion,-— nisi intellectus ipse.” 

Closely allied with this subject, and bearing upon it as argu¬ 
ment, is the doctrine of Leibnitz respecting the Primum Cognitum, 
or the origin both of ideas and names ; whether they come first from, 
and are first applied to, individual things and particular objects, or 
whether they originate with general terms, uuiversals, and whole 
classes of things. The theory of the empiricists, of those who hold 
that all our knowledge begins with information derived from the 
senses, is, that we first know, and first give names to, particular 
things, — this or that one tree, house, or river, with which we first 
become acquainted, — the name thus given being a proper noun. 
Afterwards, when we come to know other objects of the same 
class, we transfer the same appellation to them also, on account 
of their similarity; and thus the proper noun becomes a common 
one, the name of many. Thus the young child first calls one per¬ 
son nurse or mamma; then it transfers these names to several 
persons, calling them each nurse or mamma ; and finally, as its 
experience extends, it acquires the generic idea, and employs the 
generic term, woman. v 

Not so, says Leibnitz ; we begin with generals, with names of 
classes, because these connote only few attributes, and so are 
quickly and easily learned ; afterwards, as knowledge increases, we 
come to know more and more attributes, whereby to distinguish 
from each other successively smaller and smaller classes; and 
finally, we learn enough to distinguish even individuals, and give 
each of them a proper name. Thus, you or I, with little knowl¬ 
edge of flocks and herds, have but one name for a multitude, say 
sheep or cattle. Their owner, knowing them longer and better, 
readily distinguishes and names his Merinoes and Saxonies, his 
Alderneys, Durhams, and shorthorns. And the herdsman, who has 
tended them every day for a year or more, easily recognizes and 
has a pet name for every head in the flock. Every object that the 
young child sees is thing — something ; next it knows hard things 
and soft things ; next, wood , iron , and stone ; next, tables, chairs , 
clocks ; and last of all, papa's own armchair. “ Naming begin 
with individuals ! ” Why, among the infinity of objects that sur¬ 
round us, we have not yet invented a proper name for one out of 
a million. Who ever thought of naming any one blade of grass, 
leaf from a bush, or tree in a forest ? Most, if not all, of our 
proper names, were originally general terms ; thus, Smith, Carpen¬ 
ter, Mason, Stone, Wood, Green, Brown, etc. 







■*V* 












yf 



a : 




48 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Now observe that classes and class-names exist only in the mind ; 
they are products of thought, or at most, results of generalization ; 
while all existing material objects, each and every thing of which 
the senses take cognizance, is an individual, — a particular thing. 
Then knowledge and language both originate from the mind, not 
from the senses. Plato’s doctrine of abstract Ideas no longer ap¬ 
pears fanciful or mystical. The objects of the senses, the phe¬ 
nomena of the visible and tangible world, give only individual 
knowledge, which does not deserve the name of science. But 
fleeting and imperfect as these are, they afford indications, they 
are shadows, of the Intelligible world which lies beyond, and which 
contains the general Ideas, the archetypes, that are the truth of 
things. The transitory phenomena are not true existences, but 
they are images of true existences. Our object is to interrogate 
them, to classify them, to disentangle what is invariable and nec¬ 
essary from the variable and contingent; to discover the One in 
the Many. The object of philosophy is to reduce the multitude to 
unity. Philosophy, which is deductive, has nothing to do with 
individuals ; it is occupied solely with classes. It seeks to cognize 
directly the good, the beautiful, and the true, in their eternal 
archetypes, as these exist in the mind of God, and not merely in¬ 
dividual instances, imperfect and transitory because individual, of 
goodness, beauty, and truth. The mind of man, instructed by 
philosophy, is fitted to discourse immediately with these Ideas, 
which are the patterns of all created things, if it can only be freed 
from the dominion of the senses. 

The next subject which I propose to discuss — the Idea of God 
in the Soul of Man — belongs at least as much to philosophy as 
to theology. Every student of philosophy knows that the systems 
of Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche are based upon this Idea 
as their point of departure, and are colored throughout by the in¬ 
terpretation given to it; and nearly as much may be said of 
Leibnitz and the later German metaphysicians, as well as of the 
most eminent speculatists of our own day; though they often veil 
His ineffable being and essence under the names of “ the Absolute,” 
“ the Universal Will,” “ the Unconscious,” and “ the Unknowable.” 
All alike bear testimony to the fact that this Idea, in some one of 
its forms, is primitive in the mind, and upon our conception of it 
must depend any theory which we may form concerning the nature 
of pure being, the origin of existence, the source and certainty of 
knowledge, and the relations of man to the universe. Let us en¬ 
deavor, then, to bring together and compare with each other the 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


49 


various interpretations which have been given to it, and the man¬ 
ner in which philosophy and theology will be affected by adopting 
either one of them to the exclusion of the others. 

There are, I think, three leading forms of this Idea, with which 
all who have given much thought to the subject are already more 
or less conversant, and to which all the less prominent varieties of 
it may easily be reduced. Let me enumerate these briefly at the 
outset, in order to prepare the way for a subsequent fuller consid¬ 
eration of them. 

First, there is the primitive idea of God, which is innate in the 
human mind, which lies far down and indistinct in the depths of 
man’s primitive consciousness, which we all at first see, though 
without looking at it, and which, as such, is “ the true light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Of course, this 
is the germ of all the theories which may subsequently be formed 
upon the subject. Like our other Innate Ideas, — like those of 
space and time, for instance, — it may, sooner or later, more or less, 
or even not at all, be developed by reflection, instruction, or reve¬ 
lation, though these all presuppose it, virtually appeal to it, never 
entirely efface its original characteristics, and could no more have 
first imparted it to man than they could have taught geometry to 
a brute. 

Secondly, this germ is often developed, as we have too often 
seen, by reflection and deductive reasoning, into what may be 
called the metaphysician’s or philosopher’s idea of God, as the 
Infinite and the Absolute, First Cause and Causa sui, — as such, 
necessarily existent, eternal, immutable, and impassive ; creating, 
indeed, because his very being is actus purus (action without pas¬ 
sion), and therefore necessarily evolving creation from his own 
essence, though without designing it, as he is without purpose, 
without affection, and even without consciousness, or any distinct¬ 
ive attribute of personality. 

Thirdly and lastly, experience and inductive reasoning — espec¬ 
ially experience of sorrow, weakness, and sin — have evolved from 
this innate germ what I am content to call the child’s idea of God, 
for it is also the traditional and the Christian conception of Him, 
as an all-wise and all-gracious Providence and Moral Governor 
of the universe, who hears and answers prayer, who ,rewards jus¬ 
tice and punishes iniquity, is offended by sin and propitiated by 
worship and obedience, and who makes known his will to man by 
lirect and special revelation and by working miracles, as well as 
V>y the inward teachings of his Spirit, and by the numberless mani- 
4 


50 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


festations of artistic and specific design in the visible universe, — 
a Father in heaven, with a personality as distinct and as conscious 
as that which he has imparted to you and me, and to all our human 
brethren. 

Now, it is obvious that each of these three forms of the Idea, if 
taken entirely by itself, to the exclusion of both the others, is an 
inadequate and unworthy conception of Him whom it partially 
represents; and is even illusory and deceptive, as leading, either 
by plain implication or inevitable inference, to consequences which 
the heart, at least, if not the reason, instinctively rejects. And 
yet, as I believe may be easily shown, each of them contains some 
phase or aspect of the truth which is wanting in both the others ; 
and hence, both reason and revelation imperatively require that all 
three of these representations be combined, before we can attain any 
full and worthy conception of the Infinite and Holy One whom we 
all seek to know and to adore. But no sooner do we attempt such 
combination than we are beset with difficulties. Many of the attri¬ 
butes which we strive to grasp together appear, on closer exami¬ 
nation, to be inconceivable to thought and irreconcilable with each 
other. The conclusions to which we are led seem at variance with 
established facts, or with our most cherished convictions and hopes, 
or with those necessary laws of thought on which all our reason¬ 
ings and investigations in other cases depend. We find ourselves 
either groping in the dark, or blinded by excess of light; and in 
either case, we are compelled to echo the sublime exclamation of 
the Hebrew seer: “ Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst 
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is high as heaven ; 
what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” 

But here, philosophy and revelation alike come to our aid, and 
assure us that these perplexities and contradictions result from the 
finiteness of our capacities and the necessary limitations of the 
human intellect. These difficulties are not inherent in this one 
object of thought, or peculiar to a single line of inquiry. They 
meet and repel us on every hand, whenever we attempt to tran¬ 
scend the sphere of the limited and the finite, to grasp the immeas¬ 
urable, to descend to the atom, or mount to the absolute beginning 
of things — to know anything whatever as it really is, or in its 
inmost essence. Granted, that we cannot fully comprehend God 
as He really is; so neither, if our knowledge be weighed in the 
same balance, can we understand ourselves. Space and time and 
causation, pure being and personal being, man and God, must be 
accepted as ultimate and inexplicable facts. We do not merely 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


51 


believe, we know, that they are, but cannot tell how they are. As 
we cannot go back in an infinite regress, forever deducing one 
proposition or idea from a preceding one, all that is comprehensible 
and provable must rest, in the last analysis, on that which is in¬ 
comprehensible and unprovable. We thus learn, to adopt the 
language of Sir William Hamilton, that the capacities of our 
thought are not to be erected into the measure of existence, and 
that no difficulty emerges in theology which had not previously 
emerged in philosophy. The first principles of mathematical and 
physical science are as inconceivable and inscrutable as the first 
principles of theology. 

The first or innate form of the idea of God is crude, indistinct, 
and wavering. If taken by itself, to the exclusion of both the 
other forms, and without the aid of revelation, it is as likely to 
become the basis of gross superstition, to be developed into fetich- 
ism or polytheism, as to lead to pure monotheism. The second or 
metaphysical conception of God, as we may learn from Spinoza, 
only opens the road to pantheism and fatalism. Pushed to its ulti¬ 
mate results by pure reasoning, — unchecked either by the prompt¬ 
ings of conscience, the observation of nature, or the word revealed 
in Scripture, — it denies creation and every other form of miracle, 
rejects the doctrine of a providence or the moral government of 
the world, annihilates the distinct personality both of man and God, 
and, by setting up an immanent , instead of an efficient, cause of the 
universe, really accounts for nothing, but leaves us precisely where 
we were at the outset. The third, the childlike and Christian idea 
of God satisfies the heart and conscience indeed, and furnishes an 
adequate guide to life; but, if unsupported by submissive faith in 
the teachings of Scripture and the Church, it does not answer all 
the claims of the cultivated intellect. Its tendency is to anthropo¬ 
morphism. The Infinite and Perfect One, the Author and Finisher 
of all things, appears too much under the similitude of a glorified 
human Jjeing, with many of the attributes, and even the passions, 
which we recognize in ourselves. He wills, desires, and purposes, 
thus apparently laboring to accomplish something not yet within his 
reach, instead of resting in his infinite perfections. He is mutable, 
a jealous God, in turn angry and pleased with his people, inflicting 
punishment, and then again repenting him of the evil which He hath 
caused. We find it hard to reconcile the evil which is in the 
world, the inequitable distribution of happiness between the right¬ 
eous and the wicked, with his omnipotence, his perfect wisdom, 
justice, and goodness. 


52 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


But what then ? Are we to rest satisfied with either of these 
three forms of the Idea, taken separately ? or ought we to seek 
rather to mould them into one, thus eliminating what is crude and 
unsound, supplying what is imperfect and defective in each, and 
appealing to the well-known limitations of human thought to ac¬ 
count for what might otherwise seem inexplicable, and to lead us 
to accept different aspects of the same truth, even when they may 
appear irreconcilable with each other? In order to answer this 
question, we must examine each of the three forms of the Idea 
more particularly, and show how the second and third are evolved 
from the elements of the first. 

The Innate Idea of God has, I think, a threefold root in human 
nature: first, in man’s intellect or cognitive faculties; secondly, in 
his sensibility and affections; and thirdly, in his conscience or 
moral nature. The first of these has been clearly and fully stated 
and illustrated by Descartes. Man needs but little reflection and 
experience, in order to become fully aware that he is a finite, lim¬ 
ited, imperfect, and dependent being. In the eloquent language of 
Pascal: “ Man is the feeblest branch of nature ; but he is a branch 
chat thinks; ” and this thought soon teaches him the feebleness of 
his powers, the contingency and shortness of his life, and the lim¬ 
itations of his knowledge. Yet, by that wonderful law of mind 
which ordains that no one idea can be fully grasped without reveal¬ 
ing to us its opposite or contradictory, man cannot know himself 
without also knowing God; he cannot recognize his own weakness 
without contrasting it with omnipotence, or the shortness of his 
life without setting over against it an eternity, or the uncertainty 
alike of his continuance and his knowledge without having a 
glimpse of the necessary existence and omniscience of Him from 
whom his own being is derived. In a word, the imperfections of 
man reveal the perfections of his Creator; and as these perfections 
cannot be suggested by outward nature, — where also every thing 
is finite, limited, and contingent, — it must be God’s own act which 
thus lights up in the human soul a revelation of himself. It is this 
first root of the Innate Idea which, when taken by itself to the ex¬ 
clusion of the other elements, and rigorously developed, by strict 
deductive reasoning, into all its logical consequences, constitutes 
what I have called the metaphysician’s idea of God. 

Again, the sensitive or emotional part of our nature is marvel¬ 
lously adapted to the condition in which we are placed, and to the 
relations in which we stand to other beings. The love of society, 
the affections of kindred, the thirst for knowledge, the stirrings of 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


53 


ambition, emulation, wonder, sympathy, pity, the appetites, — all 
are desires and needs which have their appropriate objects , and in¬ 
cessantly spur us to exertion, that these objects may be attained 
and these necessities of our nature be gratified. Foremost among 
these primitive emotions must be placed the religious sentiment — 
that mingled feeling of awe, veneration, trust, and worship, for 
which, certainly, no finite being can be an adequate object, and 
which cannot be of artificial or arbitrary growth ; since all religious 
training, all theology, appeals to it, is based upon it, and without 
it would be impossible. In itself considered, and without culture, 
it is but a blind impulse or craving, is easily perverted, and is the 
fruitful mother of countless superstitions. But it is as ineradicable 
as any of the primitive affections; and the very evils which have 
grown out of it when unregulated, or ill-regulated, attest alike its 
fervor and its force. Of course, when acting separately, or even 
when somewhat modified by the third root, which we have still 
to consider, it is the germ of what may be called the child’s idea 
of God. 

Lastly, conscience or our moral nature reveals to us a law of 
inherent and imperative obligation, overriding all considerations of 
prudence or expediency, assuming to bridle our most vehement 
desires and strongest passions, and asserting its own supreme 
authority over all other laws and precepts whatsoever. It speaks 
not to compel; it has no constraining force, no outward sanction ; 
it needs none. It recognizes our absolute free-will. We may dis¬ 
obey it, if we will. But even in our disobedience, we still recog¬ 
nize its majesty, its rightful rule; and remorse, the stings of con¬ 
science, inevitably come to punish the transgression. It seeks no 
support from extraneous sources. On the contrary, all human and 
divine law is based upon it, presupposes it, appeals to it, and with¬ 
out it has no binding force whatsoever. It is not infused by edu¬ 
cation ; it cannot be taught. I do not admit the precept, Fiat 
justitia , mat ccelum , because I find it written in a book, or because 
my elders and betters have enjoined it upon me, any more than I 
accept for such reasons the axioms and the theorems of geometry. 
It is not derived from observation ; for observation can only teach 
me what is; while this law proclaims something entirely different, 
— what ought to be. Its demands are very broad ; it simply re¬ 
quires perfect honesty, purity, and truth, not only in outward act 
or speech, but in inward purpose. There is no such thing as half¬ 
way justice or qualified veracity; for what is wrongly so called is 
not honesty or veracity at all. Now what is the very nature of a 


54 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


law ? It is a command, tbe expression of a will; it presnpposes 
a lawgiver and a government. That is tbe very meaning of the 
word. Then the voice of conscience is the voice of God, or 
rather of a Providence, — that is, of a God who governs the world, 
and who, by the contents of this law, reveals to man His own 
nature and attributes, even perfect holiness, justice, and truth. 

This might, perhaps, be regarded as a fourth, the moralist’s, 
idea of God. As it seems to me, however, its distinctive function 
is not so much to furnish an independent conception of Deity, as 
under its peculiar form of a supreme law and ultimate standard, to 
modify and regulate the development of the other roots, and to be 
the tribunal of final appeal in determining their relative preten¬ 
sions. Exclusive attention to its dictates, — not modified by any 
consideration of its extreme fallibility, when diverted from its 
proper office of regulating one’s own thoughts and actions to that 
of passing judgment upon the conduct of others, — is the source 
of that fretful criticism of the ways of God with man, that discon¬ 
tent with the moral government of the world, which so frequently 
constitutes the skeptic’s argument, or rather his excuse. 

These are the three germs which constitute the Innate Idea of 
God in the human soul, and without which, as well as when with¬ 
out reason or language, man would not be man, but a brute. Left 
to themselves, without culture or reflection, their joint product is 
only some crude form of religious faith and observance, which, 
bad or imperfect as it is, still embraces some belief in a super¬ 
human power, who directs the conduct and destiuy of man, and 
to whom worship and obedience, sacrifice and prayer, are due. 
Even in an enlightened country and age, with all the aids of scien¬ 
tific inquiry and philosophical thought, they may receive only a 
partial and one-sided development. Their obvious meaning may 
be more or less perverted, in order to buttress dogmas or fill out 
systems of speculation. Such, in truth, has been their history. 
What I have called the metaphysician’s conception of God, as 
wrought out by Spinoza and Schelling, is drawn exclusively from 
the first of the roots here mentioned, — from that which has its 
origin in the intellect alone, — leaving wholly out of view the two 
others, of at least equal authority, which are supplied by the heart 
and the conscience. Pure reasoning about such abstract concep¬ 
tions as those of the Infinite and the Absolute, neither of which 
can be comprehended or fully grasped by the mind, might be ex¬ 
pected to lead up to consequences as dreary and appalling as 
fatalism and pantheism combined. On the other hand, the exclu- 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


55 


sive cultivation of what I have called the second root, the religious 
sentiment, that vague and awe-struck consciousness of the omni¬ 
presence of “ Him in whom we live and move and have our being,” 
can only end in an irrational, if not immoral, mysticism and quietism, 
perhaps in a rabid fanaticism. Purest and least perverted is that 
conception of the Deity which is furnished or regulated by con¬ 
science, the third root of the Innate Idea. Here, at least, we have 
the unmistakable announcement of a law which is above all other 
laws, and of a supreme Lawgiver, whose absolute holiness is 
clearly indicated in the perfect justice, purity, and truth which he 
ordains. Herein lies the proof of the conscious personality and 
will of a supreme Governor and Judge of the universe, in that 
even the Gentiles, who have not the externally written law of 
God, yet do by nature the things contained in the law,” and 
thereby “ show' the work of the law written in their hearts ; their 
conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanw'hile 
accusing or else excusing one another.” I am not afraid of the 
anthropomorphism which is involved in such an idea of God, as I 
see not how otherwise an Infinite Spirit could reveal himself to a 
finite consciousness. In some sense or other, God must become 
man, in order that man may know God. This is the probable 
meaning of the text which declares that we are “ made in his im¬ 
age, after his likeness; ” and also of that which Paul cites and 
approves, from an old Greek poet, that “ we are also his offspring,” 
and that we should seek after him and find him, “ though he be not 
far from every one of us.” 

This conception harmonizes perfectly with that which we form 
of him through the argument from design. For instance, in those 
two miracles of creative wisdom and adaptive skill, the human eye 
and the human hand, we find a great number of parts, agencies, 
and functions, nicely fitted to each other, and all working together 
by a complex and intricate, yet orderly, process towards the at¬ 
tainment of a definite and highly useful end; and we argue with 
confidence that there must exist an intelligent and active Being, 
who had this end in- view, and who made this disposition of the 
parts as a means for its accomplishment. Of course, the God w'ho 
is thus revealed to us by his works is an intelligent and conscious 
Being, having foresight and will, acting with a definite purpose, 
and thus having a personality as distinct as our own. How he 
can be at the same time both infinite and absolute, we cannot tell, 
solely because the limitations of human thought do not enable us 
to cognize either of these attributes. But what then ? In like 


56 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


manner, we cannot conceive either the infinity of space or the 
eternity of duration. In spite of this inability, however, we not 
only believe, but we know, that space is infinite and duration is 
eternal, — a beginning or an end to either being impossible. As 
elsewhere, so here, we find ourselves situated at the confluence of 
three immensities and two eternities; and as this incomprehensi¬ 
bility of our position in the universe does not lead us to doubt our 
own existence, so the perfectly similar incapacity of human thought 
must not induce us to question either the existence or the perfec¬ 
tions of Him who made and placed us here. 

We must supplement and correct the imperfect conception of 
God which is drawn from either of the three germs of the Innate 
Idea taken singly, by adding to it each of the others. We must 
not sublimate him into a mere abstract idea, aliquid immensum 
infinitumque , nor humanize him into a likeness of any of the im¬ 
perfections of man. We must believe that God is both Infinite 
and Absolute, at the same time that he is personal; though we 
know not how he is so. To believe this, as Mr. Mansel remarks, 
is simply to believe that God made the world. “ Before the 
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” 
Then, before anything was created, he was All in All, Infinite and 
Absolute, because nothing then existed which could limit his per¬ 
fections, or to which he could be in relation; One, because the 
Infinite and Absolute cannot be plural or consist of parts; Cause 
of all things, because he existed before all things ; Causa sui, or 
necessarily self-existent, because there was nothing before him 
whence his being could be derived; All-holy or perfect, because 
evil or sin is an imperfection, and therefore cannot coexist with 
the Infinite. Hence it is, as Hegel declared, that any philosophy 
of the Absolute assumes to know God as he is in his eternal es¬ 
sence, before the creation of nature and of a finite spirit. But 
then creation at any particular moment of time becomes incon¬ 
ceivable to human thought; for if causation is a possible mode of 
existence, then that which exists before causing is not infinite; and 
that which becomes a cause has passed beyond that which formerly 
limited its modes of being. 

But again, I ask, Is this inconceivability of creation a proof 
that creation is really impossible, or merely that human thought 
is limited ? If the former, then the doctrine is self-contradic¬ 
tory ; for it asserts that there is something which even Infinite 
Power cannot do, namely, create. He who assumes to know what 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


■57 


an omniscient and omnipotent God can or cannot do, really de¬ 
clares that he is omniscient himself. In like manner, I cannot see 
how suffering and sin can exist in a world governed by an in¬ 
finitely good and infinitely powerful Being; but this is only an 
assertion of what I cannot think , not of what an Infinite God can¬ 
not do. I cannot see even how infinite justice can coexist with 
infinite mercy, inasmuch as punishment for sin is absolutely re¬ 
quired by the one, and absolutely forbidden by the other. But 
their coexistence is surely not prevented by this inability of my 
thought; since they must coexist, or they would not both be 
infinite. 

But the doctrine which we are specially interested to maintain 
is, that neither of these three forms of the idea of God has any 
claim to paramount authority, so as to constitute the ultimate stand¬ 
ard by which either or both of the others is to be tried. They 
stand side by side, with equal claims to attention and respect. 
Each is primitive, innate, having its root in the inmost constitution 
of our being, and equally corroborated by the teachings of nature 
and the express declarations of holy writ. Do what we may, we 
cannot entirely silence either of the three utterances of the divine 
voice speaking to the soul of man. We cannot eliminate or 
wholly shut our eyes to any of the aspects under which God is 
manifested to human consciousness. Each is needed to supple¬ 
ment the others; for either, taken separately, is but a mutilated 
and unworthy image of the Divine Essence. Each organ of our 
spiritual life acts independently, by its own laws, and repudiates 
encroachments by a foreign power upon its own domain. The 
intellect, when acting deliberately, refuses its assent to conclusions 
prompted by the tastes and desires, and, in turn, experiences stout 
resistance when attempting to eradicate primitive impulses or 
change the objects of the emotions. Conscience rebels when casu¬ 
istical reasoning seeks to pervert its dictates, and when appetite or 
affection lures it to go astray; but the balance of authority shifts 
to the other side, when our matured and well-reasoned convictions 
declare that the moral nature is acting hastily and impulsively, so 
as to overleap its natural boundaries and deprive reason of its due. 
It is mere pedantry to regard man as exclusively a reasoning 
animal, and logic as the sole guide to truth and right. Frequently 
eur best actions are suddenly prompted by strong affection or by 
Intuitive perceptions of honor and duty; and the highest truths are 
often spiritually discerned, just where the intellect is baffled, or lags 
behind with a feeble step and an uncertain speech. True, we can- 


58 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


not precisely mark out the boundaries of the provinces within 
which each of these faculties reigns supreme ; but we can still see 
that their provinces are really distinct, and any decided encroach¬ 
ment upon either of them is both a harm and a wrong. 

That conception of Deity which is worked out by the intellect 
alone has no claim to be considered a fairer likeness of Him than 
the far different picture presented by the sensibility and the con¬ 
science. We are not to throw out the attribute of personality 
because it is inconsistent with the metaphysician’s idea of God, or 
refuse to believe that he is immutable because he hears and an¬ 
swers prayer, or deny either his omnipotence or his benevolence 
because there is evil in the world. In either case, the attribute 
which we vainly seek to eliminate rests upon precisely the same 
basis of evidence as that which we wrongfully permit to dominate 
the whole idea. The truth presents itself under a triple aspect; 
the fact that we cannot reconcile them argues only our ignorance 
and incompetency, not our power to set bounds to omnipotence. 

Pure ideas , as such, it is admitted, can never have objective 
reality, as they represent a completeness and perfection to which 
no phenomenon of experience, existing under all the limitations of 
time and space, can possibly correspond. Thus, virtue and wis¬ 
dom in their perfect purity can never be presented in the world of 
sense, but exist only in contemplation, as aims of effort or guiding 
stars pointing out directions of progress. But it is otherwise with 
ideals , considered as actually existing in the concrete, and there¬ 
fore as individual beings or entities, though determinable or deter¬ 
mined by the idea alone which shines out through their acts. As 
the idea provides only a rule in the abstract, so the ideal serves 
as an archetype for the perfect determination of the copy. But 
here the Divine must be mingled with the human, before there 
can be an adequate presentation of the great pattern and exemplar. 
The Saviour of the world is the only actual ideal that has ever ap¬ 
peared to human vision. And it is precisely on account of his 
divine character and mission, because he is God manifest in man, 
that he is at once the perfect archetype and the most real of 
beings. Pure ideas are abstractions, formed by throwing out at¬ 
tributes, such exclusion removing them from the world of reali¬ 
ties into the world of pure thought. But God, considered as ens 
realissimum, as the source of being, containing in himself not only 
the sum, but the unity, of all attributes, is the most real of all that 
the human mind can conceive of; he is the farthest removed from 
an abstraction; no predicate can be denied of him without defacing 


THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE SOUL OF MAN. 


59 


or breaking his image in the soul of man. He is not merely the 
Infinite and the Absolute (aliquid immensum infinitumque ), but 
he is also the most real of all realities, the most personal of all 
conscious beings, — a God who hears and answers prayer, who 
created and governs the universe. 

I accept, therefore, the doctrine of Pascal and Hamilton and 
Mansel. There, is an “ absolute necessity, under any system of 
philosophy whatever, of acknowledging the existence of a sphere 
of belief beyond the limits of the sphere of thought. We must 
believe, as actual, much that we cannot positively conceive as even 
possible. If mere intellectual speculations on the nature and 
origin of the material universe form a common ground on which 
the theist, the pantheist, and even the atheist, may alike expatiate, 
the moral and religious feelings of man — those facts of conscious¬ 
ness which have their direct source in the sense of personality and 
free-will — plead with overwhelming evidence in behalf of a per¬ 
sonal God, and of man’s relation to him as a person to a person. 
And by our ignorance of the Unconditioned we are led to the 
further belief, that behind that moral and personal manifestation of 
God, there lies concealed a mystery, — the mystery of the Absolute 
and the Infinite ; that our intellectual and moral qualities, though 
indicating thq nearest approach to the Divine perfections which we 
are capable of conceiving, yet indicate them as analogous, not as 
identical; and that, consequently, we shall be liable to error in 
judging by human rules of the ways of God, whether manifested 
in nature or in revelation.” 


^ 





CHAPTER IV. 


Spinoza. 

Baruch or Benedict Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, 
just five years before the publication of Descartes’ first work, the 
treatise on Method. He was a Jew by birth, but soon ceased to be 
a Jew by religion, though without thereby becoming a Christian. 
Hence he was wittily compared to the blank leaf, which, in most 
editions of the Bible, separates the Old from the New Testament. 
Yet he was far from being an immoral, or even an irreligious, man. 
He was rather a religious mystic, a speculative dreamer, so ab¬ 
sorbed in meditation on abstract ideas and following them out to 
their logical consequences, that the world around him, the world 
of real things, had not only ceased to have any interest for him, 
but had become enveloped in a haze, had been sublimated into 
pure thought, and he seemed to himself a shadow moving about 
among shadows. Leibnitz called him un moulin de raisonnement , 
— an intellectual machine for grinding out syllogisms. Frail and 
delicate in body (he died of consumption when only forty-five 
years old) ; leading the life of an anchorite, not from principle, 
or by any effort of self-denial, but simply from want of liking for 
any of the ordinary enjoyments of mankind ; irreproachable in 
character and conduct, gentle and unpretending in manners and con¬ 
versation, he conciliated not only the good-will, but even the strong 
affection, of the few ordinary persons with whom the seclusion of 
his life allowed him to come in contact. One of his townsmen, a 
good orthodox clergyman, though regarding his pantheistic doc¬ 
trines with horror, still conceived a strong affection and admira¬ 
tion for him as a man, and wrote his biography as if he were a 
saint. Less than sixpence a day sufficed for all his personal wants, 
and he earned that at his trade of grinding lenses for telescopes. 
A pension, a considerable bequest, a professorship, were offered 
to him, but he declined them all. Why should he trouble himgAlf 
with the possession of what he did not want ? He had the gentle 
toleration for any religious sect or church, which arose from per- 


SPINOZA. 


61 


feet indifference, and perhaps a little contempt, for them all. He 
was almost devoid of passions and appetite, and had well-nigh con¬ 
quered the last infirmity of noble minds, — the love of fame. His 
greatest work — the only one that contains a full development of 
his system — seems to have been left in his desk in a finished state 
for several years, and was only published after his death. 

From Leibnitz, who had at least one brief interview and con¬ 
versation with him at the Hague, and from other sources, we learn 
that he was slender, olive-complexioned, and consumptive in ap¬ 
pearance, having somewhat the aspect of a Spanish Jew, and that 
he spent nearly all his time solitary in his poorly furnished cham¬ 
ber. There he died, alone, while the family who lived in the 
same house were absent at church. 

Such a life and character, in connection with such opinions, ap¬ 
pear to many a strange phenomenon. It does not seem so to me. 
To a mind of a quiet and reflecting cast, when ill-health or other 
causes have created a disinclination for out-door pursuits, there is a 
strange fascination in abstruse studies, especially in metaphysics 
and mathematics ; and the vein of mysticism that lurks in every 
intellect, with its inevitable concomitant, an insufficient apprecia¬ 
tion of matters of fact, is soon developed. Spinoza’s peculiar 
opinions were not more the outcome of his intellect, than of his 
character and temperament. Pantheism is a doctrine of the un¬ 
reality of things around us, the illusions of the phenomenal and 
the transitory, and the absorption of all individual existences into 
the universality of abstract being. It feeds our wonder, our 
vague aspirations, our spirit of physical indolence and dreamy 
contentment. It teaches not merely self-abnegation, which always 
requires an effort, but the annihilation of self, which is spontane¬ 
ous. It is a doctrine of fatalism, also, and when held in full be¬ 
lief, it nourishes acquiescence, the cessation of passion and effort, 
and a sort of religious quietism. 

Though the characters of the two men, and the tendencies of 
the two philosophies, were so unlike, Spinoza was indebted to 
Descartes not only for the first hints, but for the whole foundation, 
of his system. Even in boyhood, he became a zealous disciple of 
the man whose fame was already mounting to the zenith; and his 
earliest publication was a sort of synopsis of the principles of the 
Cartesian philosophy, without any conscious admixture of original 
speculation. But his mind, once aroused, was too thoughtful and 
fertile to rest long in the doctrines of another. Large portions of 
the Cartesian system soon dropped out of his view altogether, and 


62 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


his attention became eagerly concentrated on what was left, which 
seemed to lead by necessary implication and logical sequence to a 
long train of startling conclusions. Spinozism is an exaggerated 
development of one side of Cartesianism. Descartes began at 
least with two concrete facts, Thought and Self. Spinoza dropped 
both, and commenced with a definition, an arbitrary one , of a pure 
idea. His whole philosophy is founded on Descartes’ definition, 
somewhat modified and expanded, of Substance, as “ that which 
exists in se (or without a cause), and is conceived per se — in 
itself; that is, which, in order to be conceived, does not need a 
prior conception of anything else.” Another of his definitions, 
and the leading one of his system, is borrowed in part from the 
Cartesian argument for the being of a God. “ A thing which is 
its own Cause, or is self-caused, i. e., which exists in se,” he says, 
“ is that the essence of which involves existence, or whose nature 
cannot be known except as existing.” Obviously, the former of 
these is so framed as to exclude in the outset all individual and 
real objects from the definition of Substance, and thereby to take 
for granted his whole doctrine. First assume the unreality of our 
own minds and of every thing around us, by limiting the definition 
of Substance to being in et per se, and thereby denying the sub¬ 
stantiality of an ens causatum or ens per aliud , and it follows im¬ 
mediately that the Infinite First Cause is the only true Substance, 

— and hence that God is every thing and every thing is God. What 
need, then, of all the remaining definitions, axioms, theorems, and 
other apparatus of geometrical proof? This definition alone is 
Pantheism in a nutshell. 

When we wish to distinguish a Substance from its Attributes, it 
is, of course, correct to say, that the latter can be conceived only 
through the former, that is, through something in which they 
inhere, — per aliud; whereas the former, Substance, is conceived 
per se, as a ground of the Attributes, but a ground which is in¬ 
dependent of them. But what authorizes Spinoza to affirm that 
Substance not only must be conceived per se, but must exist in 
se; that it does not need a prior conception of anything as its 
Cause* the origin of its being; and hence, that, the only true 
Substance is self-caused, the essence of which irivolves existence, 

— that is, God ? We are immediately conscious, as Descartes says, 
of ourselves, of our own personal existence, conscious of it inde¬ 
pendently of its manifestations; we can conceive of it not only 
as acting, but as at rest; not only as thinking, but in the inter¬ 
vals of thought, feeling, or action. Then I am myself a true 


SPINOZA. 


63 


Substance, which can be conceived per se, but certainly cannot 
exist in se; for I am finite, limited, and dependent, so that there 
must have been — there must be — a Cause, or I should instantly 
lapse into the nothingness whence I was drawn. The initial and 
pervading fallacy of Spinozistic reasoning is the unfounded assump¬ 
tion, made at the outset, and continued throughout the argumenta¬ 
tion, that Substance, in order to be Substance, must both be con¬ 
ceived per se and exist in se ; that is, must exist without a Cause. 

But it may be said that Spinoza has a right to make what defi¬ 
nitions he pleases of the technical terms that he employs, provided 
he is consistent in the use of them, adhering to these definitions 
throughout. He has a right, for instance, to consider God, because 
He is infinite and self-existent, as the only true Substance, or Sub¬ 
stance in the highest sense of the term. Very true; this is pre¬ 
cisely what Descartes did, who admitted human beings and other 
contingent existences to be substances only in a secondary and 
derivative sense. But then Spinoza has no right subsequently, a3 
the conclusion of his philosophy, to pass from his ideal distinctions 
to the world of real thingS, and take for granted that he has proved 
human beings and other finite existences not to be Substance in 
any sense, i. e., not to be realities, because he has shown that they 
are not Substance in his sense/ He ought not to deny the reality 
of the ens causatum, because it does not come within his definition 
of the ens in se. There is a wide difference between subjective 
definitions and objective facts. From premises hypothetically 
assumed, it is illogical to draw any conclusion respecting the uni¬ 
verse of realities. 

The second definition which I have quoted is based upon the 
Cartesian doctrine, that a Cause is necessary, not only for the 
beginning, but also for the continuance, of existence ; and this, 
as already observed, confounds the relation between Cause and 
Effect with that between Substance and Attribute. In order to 
prove his doctrine of continuous creation, Descartes was obliged to 
assume that created things, because they are Substances only in a 
secondary and derivative sense, have no virtue in themselves which 
enables them to exist, and therefore have no continuous existence, 
but are perpetually fading out into nothingness ; like the light of 
\he sun, if not at every moment renewed by fresh undulations 
proceeding from the great central luminary, they not only disap¬ 
pear, but really cease to be. Then they have only a sort of 
shadowy or counterfeit being; they are always becoming, but never 
really being. As Plato expresses it, they are rt to yiyvopevov plv 


64 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


kcu avoXXvfievov, ov rtos Se ovShrort ov. Then, too, like the sunlight 
again, they are not Substances in themselves, but only the chang¬ 
ing manifestation of an attribute of the only real Substance. Here 
Spinoza is not exaggerating one of the doctrines of his prede¬ 
cessor, but only drawing an inference from it, which, however 
logical and obvious, Descartes failed to see. Still building upon 
Cartesian foundations, Spinoza next avails himself of the ontologi¬ 
cal argument for the being of a God, by converting it into a defi¬ 
nition of Causa sui, or that which, as self-caused, does not need 
to be created, but exists in se. That, he says, is Causa sui , “ the 
essence of which involves existence, or whose nature cannot be 
known except as existing.” This alone he assumes to be Sub¬ 
stance properly so called. 

But strictly speaking, nothing can be causa sui, self-caused ; 
for in order to be caused at all, it must have begun to be; and 
before the beginning of its existence, it cannot have been the 
cause of anything, not even of itself. What is meant by calling 
it “ self-caused ” is simply, that it is self-existent or eternal; that 
is, that it was not caused at all. Otherwise interpreted, Causa sui 
is merely First Cause ; that is, First Cause of every thing else, 
but not of itself, for that is absurd. And we do not make the 
definition more intelligible by adding the Cartesian doctrine, that 
the essence of it involves existence; for it must exist before it 
can have any essence, so that, logically, the essence can neither be 
the Cause nor the reason of its being. Non-entis nulla sunt at- 
tributa; there are no attributes, and consequently no essence, of a 
nonentity. 

Hence, as Schelling remarks, Spinoza’s system, and every other 
pantheistic system, maintains that “ in Deo, essentia et existentia 
unum idemque sunt.” His existence is not something different 
fyom his essence, but is that essence itself. He is, as the French 
would say, Celui qui est; or in Hebrew phrase, “ I am that I am.” 
This is the proper idea of him, for it is what the word, God, means. 
Because he is nothing else than “ the Existing,” we must hold that 
existence is not one of his peculiarities or attributes, — is not an 
attribute at all, or in any sense, — but is his inmost Being. This 
ineffable Being is expressed in the two attributes, extension and 
thought, one or the other of which we apprehend as the necessary 
form of all existence; and each of these attributes, again, is man¬ 
ifested in an infinity of particular and transitory Modes. Spinoza’s 
whole system, indeed, is only an expansion of the two ideas, pri¬ 
marily derived by him from Descartes, of Substance and Necessary 


SPINOZA. 65 

Existence; and these two he reduces to unity by identifying each 
with the other. 

The fundamental fallacy of this artificial and elaborate system 
may be pointed out in still another manner. Substance, in the 
Spinozan sense, is merely an abstract general idea or class-name — 
what the Logicians call a Concept; for it is pure being— ens — 
considered both in se and per se, — that is, anterior to and apart 
from its modes or particularizing attributes, and therefore is one, 
and not many. But so is every general abstract idea or concept, 
— man, for instance; for, considered simply as man, apart from 
the qualities or accidents which distinguish one particular man from 
another, he is man in general —humanity, human nature—the 
one common human element manifesting itself alike in all individ¬ 
ual men. Of humanity as thus considered, precisely because it is 
a mere idea, and therefore has no relation to time or space, neither 
unity nor plurality, neither beginning nor end, can be predicated. 
We cannot assign it to any one determinate place, or to any defi¬ 
nite time, more than to another, because we do not even attribute 
to it actual existence in the same sense in which we attribute 
reality to individual things. In like manner, circle, considered in 
se and per se, —that is, in the abstract geometrical definition of it, 
is neither one nor many, neither begins to be nor ceases to be, for 
in truth it does not exist at all, except in the mind of him who con¬ 
ceives it; but as a class-name, it is equally applicable to any and 
every particular circle which you can draw or think of. Now 
Spinoza takes as the foundation of his system, not the concept of 
a definite and limited class of things, such as man or circle, but 
the most comprehensive of all concepts — that which includes all 
others, namely, substance in the abstract, or pure being — ens or 
esse. Of course, every thing is substance, for this is only saying 
that every thing is or exists. Hence he rightly says, in rerum na- 
tura, nihil datur prceter substantias earumque affectiones. This 
follows from the logical axiom of Excluded Middle, which declares 
that A and not-A, “horse” and “not-horse,” include the universe, 
For as he defines substance as that which exists per se, and mode 
or affection (what we call quality or attribute) as that which does 
not exist per se, but per aliud, it is evident that substance and 
mode, taken together, include the universe. But this holds true 
not of any individual substance and mode, but only of the class- 
name of substances and the class-name of modes, this class-name 
being single, while the things belonging to the class are indefinitely 
numerous. 


5 


66 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


What Spinoza calls the Attributes of a thing are what we should 
call its necessary attributes; since these alone “ express,” or are 
the necessary results of its essence. The other attributes — “ acci¬ 
dents ” the old logicians call them — are merely its temporary 
forms or “ Modes.” Thus, if a lump of wax be taken as an exam¬ 
ple of material substance, its extension and impenetrability are its 
necessary attributes, or Attributes in the Spinozan sense; for, 
without these, if it were not extended and impenetrable, it would 
not be wax, it would not be material substance, it would not exist 
at all. On the other hand, its particular color, its liquid or solid 
state, its hot or cold condition, its spherical, elongated, or cubical 
shape, are its Modes. Thus Spinoza and Malebranche, following 
St. Augustine and St. Anselm, will not even allow us to say “ God 
is good,” “ God is just,” etc.; as this would seem to imply that the 
qualities in question are mere accidents or modes, and therefore 
might be changed without his ceasing to be God. But they say 
God is goodness, God is justice, and the like, which implies that 
he cannot be anything else than this without ceasing to be Deity. 
Hence, also, comes the Scholastic dogma, that any one of these 
necessary attributes perfectly expresses the essence of Divinity, so 
that, in him, all attributes are one, — there is no plurality of at¬ 
tributes or plurality of essence ; but he is absolute unity, which 
one necessary attribute, again, expresses his whole essence or in¬ 
most being. When we say, argues St. Anselm, that a particular 
man is just, we mean simply that he participates in justice, or has 
a share in this virtue along with others, who also partake of it, 
But the infinite and perfect Being does not share his perfections 
with others, as this would be to diminish their completeness in 
himself. Then he must be justice itself; he has it not, but he 
is it. As much can be said of every quality or quantity which is 
attributed to him ; all that he is, he is substantially, or as Sub¬ 
stance, not as Attribute. This is not saying that he is an assem¬ 
blage or aggregate of all good qualities; for a compound is in¬ 
debted to its elements for all that it is; it is formed by them and 
exists only in relation to them. But God is the one supreme good 
expressed under different names. He is absolutely one. 

Spinoza’s sixth definition is of God, by which, he says, “ I un¬ 
derstand an absolutely Infinite Being; that is to say, a Being con¬ 
sisting of an infinity of attributes, each one of them expressing an 
eternal and infinite essence ; ” “ absolutely infinite,” he explains ; 
and not merely “ infinite in its own kind,” or in certain respects. 
Thus, a geometrical line may be infinite in one respect, namely, in 


SPINOZA. 


67 


length, but not in breadth or thickness ; a surface may be infinite 
in two respects, length and breadth, but not in thickness ; and so 
on for any finite number of respects. But the absolutely infinite 
Being or Substance has an infinite number of respects or attributes, 
since every thing which expresses an essence, and does not involve 
any negation, belongs to its essence; in every light in which this 
eternal Being or Substance can be viewed, he is infinite. 

To our finite comprehension, however, there are revealed only 
two attributes, namely, extension and thought. To us, consequently, 
God appears under the attributes of infinite extension and infinite 
thought. These two, though infinite, do not limit, and so negative, 
each other; because, as Spinoza explains in his second definition, 
“ a thing is said to be finite in its own kind , when it is limited or 
bounded by another thing of the same nature. For example, a 
body is called a finite thing, because we can always conceive it as 
part of a greater body of the same kind; in like manner, a thought 
is finite because limited by another thought. But body is not lim¬ 
ited by thought, nor thought by body, since these are of different 
kinds.” Both may be infinite together. 

Here, of course, Spinoza is borrowing from Descartes the noted 
radical distinction between mind and matter, that they have noth¬ 
ing in common, since thought is the essence of one and extension 
the essence of the other. But Spinoza maims and defaces the doc¬ 
trine in the borrowing ; for he strikes out the two separate sub¬ 
stances , namely, mind and matter, in which Descartes conceived 
thought and extension respectively to inhere, and gives them one 
universal substance, as their common ground. A great dispute still 
exists, whether Spinozism annihilates the universe, by resolving it 
into Deity, — in which case the system is pure Pantheism, or Acosm- 
ism, as Coleridge prefers to call it; or whether it annihilates Deity, 
by resolving God into the universe,-—in which case the joint con¬ 
clusion is Atheism and Materialism. The true interpretation is, 
that it annihilates both God and the universe, by resolving both 
into the inconceivable abstraction of a universal Substance, which 
is to us, because inconceivable, a nonentity; and thus the proper 
result of the system is Nihilism. Just so with the later German 
forms of the doctrine. Schelling teaches that subject and object, 
or mind and matter, are equal and parallel developments of their 
common ground, which is “the Absolute;” and he frankly admits 
that the Absolute is inconceivable to thought. And Hegel in fact 
comes to the same result, when he explicates the ground of the 
two as the Indifferentism of pure being and nothing, and causes 







/ 






/ 



68 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


thought to oscillate between them through the notion of becoming ; 
when, by one swing of the pendulum, nothing becomes pure being, 
which is creation, and by the opposite swing, pure being becomes 
nothing, which is annihilation. 

As we are now in the seventh heaven of transcendental meta¬ 
physics, let me attempt to construct a ladder, on which common 
understandings may rise to some faint apprehension of what we 
are talking about. Logic teaches us this law of thought, that as 
we diminish the intension of a concept or class-notion by abstract¬ 
ing attributes, we thereby enlarge its extension by admitting more 
objects, thus taking successive steps of higher and higher generali¬ 
zation. For example: from the concept of the class Mammalia, 
take away the attribute “ suckling their young,” and we have the 
larger class Vertebrates; from Vertebrate, abstract the attribute 
u having a spinal column,” and there results the still larger class 
Animals; from Animal remove “ sentient life,” and we have the 
yet broader notion Organic Substance ; from this take away “ or¬ 
ganism,” and there is left the still more abstract and comprehen¬ 
sive term material substance , or matter; now remove solidity or 
impenetrability, and the notion rises and broadens to something ex¬ 
tended, geometrical form ; then take away abstract extension (the 
last attribute there is to abstract) and we have anything, all things, 
existence per se, what Spinoza calls Substance, or absolutely Infi¬ 
nite Being, God. 

Now reverse the process, and begin to endow, though sparingly, 
this sublimated notion with attributes again. Give it thought, 
and we have thinking substance ; give it extension and we have 
extended substance. But what we have now given is only attri¬ 
butes ; the substance in which both thought and extension inhere 
is still one and universal. For, argues Spinoza, in his fifth theo¬ 
rem, “ There cannot in the nature of things be two substances of 
the same nature ; ” for then the essence of this common nature 
would express itself in the same attributes; and identity both of 
nature and attribute can exist and be conceived only as identity of 
substance. Neither can diversity be proved by difference of 
modes or accidents ; for substance being logically anterior in na¬ 
ture to its affections, (for instance, the substance of wax must exist 
before it can be moulded into any particular form,) if we abstract 
from the modes, there will be nothing to differentiate this from 
any other substance. The ground must be common, must be one. 
Take away the modes or particular affections from wax and iron, 
for instance, and they become (to our conception, at least) one 


SPINOZA. 69 

common substance, matter, having the single attribute of exten¬ 
sion. / 

In his eighth theorem, Spinoza proves that this one substance 
is necessarily infinite. “ It cannot be finite,” he says, “ for then 
this substance would be limited by another of the same nature, 
and we should have two substances of the same nature and attri¬ 
butes, which has just been shown to be impossible. Then it must 
be infinite.” It must also be eternal, for there is no other sub¬ 
stance to be its cause ; and indeed, by the definition already given, 
substance is that which exists and is conceived per se, not need¬ 
ing a prior conception of a cause, or of anything else, in order to 
exist. Then it is self-caused ; its essence involves existence; it is 
eternal. 

We see then, the general result of Spinozism. It can only be 
symbolized, and with a larger use of figurative language than I 
like to employ. All individual things, whether of mind or body, 
and the broad universe which they people, are dissolved into a 
boundless and eternal ocean of pure being. Waves rise upon its 
surface, only to fall again into the broad expanse from which they 
were uplifted, and with which they are, in substance, identical. 
Whether they take the form of extension or thought, it matters 
not; in either case, they are but manifestations of one and the 
same nature and essence. All particular existences, all that seems 
individual being, are only bubbles that fret, or vapors that rise 
from, this ever-heaving and shoreless sea; and they will soon break, 
or be collected in drops, and find their way back to identity with 
that which is at once their birthplace and their tomb. The dif¬ 
ferences by which they seem to be distinguished from each other 
are but fleeting modes or accidents of mist, cloud, and rain, which 
the common element puts forth for a brief while, and then with¬ 
draws into itself. The heaving and subsiding, the phenomenal 
movement and change, are not produced, as in the case of the real 
ocean, by any cause operating upon the mass from without; for 
there is no such cause, no existence whatever, which is foreign or 
external to it; its own being is one and all. An internal princi¬ 
ple of change, an immanent or inbiding cause, keeps up the cease¬ 
less agitation which is its nature. These infinite mutations of 
form with ceaseless persistency of matter are vividly imagined in 
Shelley’s striking poem, “ The Cloud,” of which I quote a single 
stanza: — 

“ I am the daughter of earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky; 


70 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; 

I change, but I cannot die. 

For after the rain, when with never a stain 
The pavilion of heaven is bare, 

And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, 

Build up the blue dome of air, 

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 

And out of the caverns of rain, 

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 

I arise and unbuild it again.” 

This conception of Immanent Cause brings out the doctrine of 
necessity, or the absence of freedom, which is the grand charac¬ 
teristic of the development of Spinoza’s system. The phenome¬ 
nal aspect of the universe — what appears to us — is an endless 
succession of changes, not occurring at random, but uniform in 
sequence, or, as we say, subject to law. We give the name of 
cause to the regular antecedent, and that of effect to its uniform 
consequent; but we nowhere discern, we never can discern, any 
causal connection, any real bond of union, between the two. There 
is nothing but invariable, eternal antecedence and consequence ; 
everywhere the immutability of law. Every event, of course, is 
surrounded by other events, and mu3t be viewed as necessarily fol¬ 
lowing those which preceded, and necessarily followed by those 
which come after it, and thus as forming one link in an adaman¬ 
tine chain which stretches from eternity to eternity. Each and 
all are but the immanent movement, the internal law of change, 
which is the inmost being of nature or the absolutely infinite Sub¬ 
stance ; it is the groundswell of the vast ocean, the self-produced 
agitation of the fathomless depths, the panting of the mighty 
bosom of the universal mother. Every volition even, every act 
of a conscious agent, is preceded by certain states of mind, all 
involuntary, on which it is necessarily consequent; and these 
mental states are the inevitable results of physical changes in the 
world without, and these again of others, all entering into the line 
which stretches from infinitude to infinitude. The power or neces¬ 
sity, which now is, has existed from eternity, and has come down 
to us through an interminable series of events, never relaxing its 
iron grasp, never varying in intensity, — a blind and unconscious 
God. 

And yet Spinoza has his notion of what Freedom is. In his 
seventh definition, he says, “ a thing is free when it exists from 
the mere necessity of its own nature, and is determined to act 
only by itself ; a thing is necessary, or rather constrained, when it 
is determined by something else both to exist and to act according 


SPINOZA. 


71 


to a determinate law.” As if one were any the more free, when 
determined by an internal necessity, than if he were irresistibly 
impelled from without! In this sense, nature is a cause, but a 
cause only of itself; it is, in Spinozan phrase, natura naturans, 
or nature working out itself. It is only contemplating the other 
side of the same idea, to regard nature as an effect — natura na- 
turata — nature worked out by its own inherent laws. In truth, 
the theory destroys all notion of the relation between cause and 
effect, by merging the notion of the two terms into one, that of 
inevitable sequence. 

However others may regard it, this conception of the absolute 
universality of immutable law seems to me not more sublime, than 
it is appalling. Existence would not be worth having in such a 
sheet-iron universe, with heavens of brass and a heart of stone. 
If one could believe it — thank God that I do not! — it would 
drive him to suicide; for what would it matter, when one bubble 
more should break on the surface of that cruel waste of waters, 
— that dark abyss of soulless being ? 

I will now translate as literally as possible a few of Spinoza’s 
theorems, by way of recapitulation, and to show that I have fairly 
represented his theory. The 14th: “ No other substance can 
exist, or even be conceived, except God,” and “ All that is, is in 
God; and nothing can be, or be conceived, without God.” The 
18th: “ God is the immanent, but not the transeunt cause of 
all things.” The 26th : “ Every thing which is determined to this 
or that action, has been necessarily determined to it by God; and 
if God did not determine a thing to act, it could not determine 
itself.” The 28th : “ Every individual object, every thing, what¬ 
ever it may be, which is finite and has a determinate existence, can 
neither exist nor be determined to act, except it be determined to 
existence and action by a cause, which is also finite and has a 
determined existence; and this cause itself can only exist and be 
determined to act by a new cause, finite like the others, and deter¬ 
mined as they are ; and so on to infinity.” The 32d: “ The will 
cannot be called a free, but only a necessary cause ; ” and hence, 
as a corollary, “ God does not act by virtue of a free will; . . . . 
and consequently, will does not belong to the divine nature, any 
more than all other natural things; but the will has the same rela¬ 
tion to the divine being that movement and repose have, and every 
thing else which results from the necessity of the divine nature.” 
The 33d: “ The things which have been produced by God could 
not have been so produced in any other manner, or in a different 
order.” 


72 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Absolute being is identical with absolute activity. To be, is for 
God, to act; to act is to produce ; to produce is to run through 
and to fill out all the degrees of existence; just as any one 
material substance unceasingly manifests all its attributes. God 
produces at first thought and extension, which are the necessary 
expression of his essence. From thought and extension eternally 
proceed infinite modes or affections of thought and extension, 
which contain in themselves other modes, though of a lower degree 
of perfection; since every mode is more or less perfect according 
to the longer or shorter line which unites it to the source of being. 
Body, according to Spinoza, is a mode which expresses in a deter¬ 
minate form the essence of God, so far as God is regarded as an 
extended being. The human soul is a succession of modes of 
thought which represent his essence so far as he is a thinking 
being. Man himself is the identity of a human soul closely united 
with a human body. The two perfectly correspond with each 
other, — impressions on the organs with sensations in the mind, 
and volitions in the mind with movements of the muscles, — be¬ 
cause the one expresses the thought, and the other the extension, 
of one and the same substance. What God is as body, at a deter¬ 
minate moment of his development, that he thinks as soul ; and 
the result is man. Body and soul are but one and the same being 
with two aspects, or, so to speak, a single ray of light, which is 
decomposed and doubled when it reflects itself in consciousness. 
There is no physical action between soul and body ; there is only 
a metaphysical union of them in God. The human soul is not 
properly a being — a thing; it is not substance which constitutes 
the form or essence of man. The human soul is a pure mode — a 
pure collection of ideas ; the body is a pure mode or aggregate of 
the forms of extension. The reality of an aggregate is resolved 
into that of the elements of which it is made up. “ The soul, in so 
far as it knows the body and itself under the character of eternity, 
— that is, as necessarily existing, — necessarily possesses the knowl¬ 
edge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived by 
him.” 


CHAPTER Y. 


Malebranche. 

Still following the line of the immediate disciples and continua- 
tors of Descartes, we pass from the mystical pantheism of Spinoza 
to the gorgeous imaginations and fervid eloquence of the Christian 
Plato, Malebranche. We found Cartesianism modified by theo¬ 
logical indifference or unbelief in the former; we shall find it still 
more changed in the latter by religious enthusiasm, by a fervent 
and meditative piety, nursed by seclusion and study into a beatific 
vision of the intimate union of the human soul with God. With 
very dissimilar antecedents, and even opposite tastes and predilec¬ 
tions, the speculations of the two still led to parallel, and, in many 
respects, to identical results. The God-universe of the one was 
dissolved into the infinitude of universal substance ; the activity of 
the human intellect was merged by the other into a mystical per¬ 
ception of all things in God, his philosophy adopting in its literal 
sense the fervent saying of the Apostle, “ In him we live, and 
move, and have our being.” 

Born one year after the publication of Descartes’ first work, 
in a family of some rank and wealth, but cut off from the pursuits 
of temporal ambition not more by a feeble and sickly body, pro¬ 
ceeding from a distorted spine, than by strong attachment to let¬ 
ters, philosophy, and religion, Malebranche found in early life a 
congenial retirement among the Fathers of the Oratory. The 
members of this remarkable association, one of the best belonging 
to the Romish Church, were not bound to their order by perpetual 
vows like the monks, but were attached to the secular priesthood 
in full standing, though without parochial duties, and were free to 
leave their retreat at any time when inclination called them back 
to the outer world. The cultivation of letters and philosophy, the 
instruction of the young, and the exercises of practical piety, were 
their only employments while they remained in the Oratory. Such 
a fraternity was a fitting home for Malebranche. After he had 
been ten years a member of it, accident made him acquainted with 


74 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Descartes’ first publication; and the study of this work developed 
in his mind a system of Christian philosophy, the exposition and 
defence of which occupied the remainder of his life. His writings, 
which are voluminous, had great popularity and success, for he 
was one of the founders and masters of ornate and eloquent French 
prose, the contemporary and rival of Pascal, Bossuet, and Fene- 
lon, and perhaps superior to them all in lofty flights of the imagi¬ 
nation and in the wealth and vivacity of his illustrations. Re¬ 
ligious enthusiasm and the thirst for knowledge in the world of 
pure and abstract ideas seem constantly striving in him for the 
mastery, clothing the most abstruse speculations of metaphysics 
with the ferveut aspirations and prayers of pious sentiment and 
faith. 

“ O Lord Jesus,” he exclaims, “ my strength and my light! 
Can I obtain from thee to know what I am, and what is this sub¬ 
stance in me which is capable of knowing the truth and loving the 
good ? I am ; but for how long ? Am I eternal, or shall I cease 
to be ? I am, but what am I ? I think, but how ? When I think of 
bodies, I see well what they are capable of; I compare them with 
each other, and discover their mutual relations. But whatever ef¬ 
fort I make to represent me to myself, I cannot discover what I 
am. When I suffer any pain, I am conscious of it; but I cannot 
comprehend what the pain is, nor what relation it can have either 
with me, or with that which surrounds me. In a word, I am but 
darkness to myself, and my own being appears to me unintelligible. 
If thou dost not enlighten me with thy light, the very love which 
I have for the truth will only precipitate me into error; for I feel 
myself inclined to believe that my substance is eternal, that I am 
part of the Divine Being, and that all my thoughts are but indi¬ 
vidual modes of the universal reason.” 

There can be little doubt what will be the issues of a philosophy 
conceived in such a spirit and directed by such a purpose. Its 
conclusions will be, that we do not directly know particular things 
and sensible objects; we know them only by ideas. It is intelligi¬ 
ble extension, and not material extension that we immediately per¬ 
ceive. In vision, the proper object of the mind is the universal — 
the idea; and as the idea is in God, it is in God that we see all 
things. The outward world exists, since God assures us of its 
reality in his revealed word ; but we never perceive it in itself, 
but only in its idea, as this exists in the omnipresent mind of its 
Creator. 

If Malebranche were only a religious mystic, his theory would 


MALEBRANCHE. 


75 


not concern us here. But he is something more, — a philosopher, 
at once acute, ingenious, and profound, subtle in argument and 
analysis, bold and comprehensive in his generalizations, and win¬ 
ning assent as much by his breadth of reasoning and command of 
facts as by his fervid eloquence. Let us endeavor, then, to follow 
the thread of his speculations, though perhaps no other writer, 
except Plato, suffers so much by cold analysis and abridgment. 

Two leading doctrines of the Cartesian philosophy form the 
starting points of the theory of Malebranche. The first is the 
noted distinction between matter and mind, — that the very es¬ 
sence of the former consists in extension, and of the latter in 
thought; so that there is no parity or community of being be¬ 
tween them. The secoud is the mathematical doctrine, that the 
criterion of truth is found in clear and distinct ideas, which are 
true, and cannot be suspected of falsehood without impeaching the 
veracity of God. How, then, asks Malebranche, and all subse¬ 
quent philosophy has continually repeated the question, how, then, 
can there be any communication between two things which are set 
over against each other as radically unlike, not having a single 
attribute in common ? How can that which is inextended come 
in contact with extension, so as to be affected by it ? Mind is not 
even a mathematical point, since that is an element of extension, 
and can be touched by a line or surface, two osculating curves 
meeting at such a point. But mind has no such point of con¬ 
tact ; it cannot be touched. Neither can it be operated upon, or 
in any wise affected or changed without contact, as this would im¬ 
ply that matter can act where it is not; and as action is a mode 
of being, this is equivalent to saying that it can be where it is not , 
which is a contradiction in terms. Moreover, impulse through 
contact can produce nothing but motion ; and motion, as it de¬ 
pends on relations of distance, which is a mode of extension, can 
be predicated only of extended substance, but not of inextended 
thought. Extension cannot even be imaged, imagined, or repre¬ 
sented, except through extension, since in this respect only can the 
picture bear any resemblance whatever to the reality. I can rep¬ 
resent by lines on a blackboard two feet square the relative mag¬ 
nitudes, positions, and distances of all the bodies in the solar sys¬ 
tem ; but without lines, and a surface to draw them on, such a 
representation is inconceivable. Then the intelligible extension, 
which is present to my thought, and of which I have a perfectly 
'iear and distinct idea, (this being the criterion of truth,) cannot 
nave any feature in common with material extension, which is an 
affection of matter. 


76 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


The enigma becomes still more dark and profound when we 
pass from sensation or perception, which is conceived as matter 
acting upon mind, to the voluntary production of motion, as in 
raising the arm, which is mind affecting matter. How can my 
thought or volition move an extended substance without touching 
it ? or how, if not itself extended, can it touch any material sub¬ 
stance ? 

According to the vulgar notion, the senses are the channels 
which transmit impressions or images of the attributes of matter 
to the thinking mind. But we are continually mistaking the affec¬ 
tions of our minds, which are the consequences, for the qualities of 
body, which are supposed to be the causal antecedents, though there 
is no more resemblance between them than between fire, and the 
liquefaction of ice which results from contiguity to the fire. Thus, 
sound is an affection of the soul, which cannot exist anywhere but 
in mind, since its essence consists in being felt; but its physical 
cause, the only phenomenon corresponding to it in the world 
without, is a vibration first of the air and then of the tympanum of 
the ear. We are conscious only of the sound, and not of the vibra¬ 
tion which produces it, the former being in no conceivable sense 
an image or representation of the latter. In like manner, warmth 
is felt, being purely an object of consciousness; whilst that which 
affects our organs, and is supposed to create this sensation of 
warmth, is an unknown fluid, or affection of matter, called caloric. 
So it is witli colors, tastes, and smells; they are all subjective affec¬ 
tions, or modifications of that within us which thinks. Yet be¬ 
cause the mind does not perceive the movements of its own bodily 
organs, but only its own sensations, and because it knows that these 
sensations are not produced by its own agency, it habitually refers 
to a substance material and divisible what really belongs to a sub¬ 
stance spiritual and simple. “ Nothing,” says D’Alembert, “ is 
more extraordinary, in the operations of mind, than to see it 
transport its sensations out of itself, and spread them, as it were, 
over a substance to which they cannot possibly belong.” 

Malebranche even distinguishes with great acuteness between 
two classes of these sensations. “ In the case of the sensations of 
pain and of heat ,” he says, “ it was much more advantageous that 
we should think we feel them in those parts of the body which are 
immediately affected by them, than that we should associate them 
with the external objects by which they are occasioned ; because 
pain and heat having the power to injure our members, we needed 
to be warned in what place to apply the remedy ; whereas colors 


MALEBRANCHE. 


77 


not being likely, in ordinary cases, to hurt the eye, it would be 
useless for us to know that they are painted on the retina. On 
the contrary, as they are useful only so far as they instruct us re¬ 
specting things external, it was essential that we should be so con¬ 
stituted as to attach them to, or perceive them in, the objects on 
which they depend.” The color of which we are conscious as 
really seeing it is not spread over the object, or even painted on 
the retina, but exists solely in the mind, and is as unlike the mo¬ 
tion that produces it, as the pain caused by a blow is unlike the 
stick by which it is inflicted. Hence a person who is stone-blind, 
if the optic nerve be not destroyed, may, from a sharp concussion 
on the back of the head, actually see a flash of light. Paradoxical 
as it may seem, vision is actually independent of light. 

The first step which Malebranche takes to solve this great prob¬ 
lem respecting the communication between Mind and Matter is 
the obvious one, that we do not perceive external objects in them¬ 
selves, but only the ideas or representations of them in our minds. 
This is the ideal theory, or the doctrine of mediate perception 
through the intervention of ideas, which it is the main object of 
the Scotch school, of Dr. Reid and Sir W. Hamilton, to disprove. 
The proper author of it, or rather its originator in modern times, 
is Malebranche. He argues, that “ when we see the sun, the stars, 
and a multitude of other objects out of ourselves, it is not proba¬ 
ble that the mind leaves the body, aud goes abroad in the heavens, 
to contemplate these objects there.” And it is a gross, improbable, 
and unprovable hypothesis to suppose, as the Peripatetics and the 
Schoolmen did, that sensible species, or subtle and half immaterial 
simulacra, are constantly peeling off from every object, and flying 
everywhere through space, some of which come in contact with 
our organs of sense, and through these channels are introduced to 
our minds. No, says Malebranche, this is incredible ; were it so, 
colors, tastes, sounds, etc., would not be, as they are, mere subject¬ 
ive affections, but true similitudes or copies of what they represent. 
Then the immediate object of our minds, when we see the sun, for 
example, is not the sun itself, but something which is intimately 
united with our souls; and this is what I call idea. In percep¬ 
tion, it cannot be doubted that the idea of what we perceive is 
actually present to our minds ; but there need not be anything ex¬ 
ternal which is similar to this idea. I may think of a mountain of 
gold ; such a mountain does not exist, but I am not therefore think¬ 
ing of nothing. There is something there, actually present to 
thought. So in dreaming, in delirium, ideas are there, as vivid, as 


78 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


lifelike, as firmly trusted for the moment, as in our sober waking 
hours. 

Whatever is in our mind, however, as a mere modification of 
that mind, such as sensations, feelings, appetites, joy, sorrow, and 
the like, these we are conscious of, and immediately perceive with¬ 
out the intervention of ideas ; for they are actually present. But 
external objects are not present; the material causes of these sen¬ 
sations are not present. Such objects, such causes, can be known 
only through ideas. Besides external material objects, there are 
also spiritual objects, the minds of other men, angels, celestial 
principalities, powers, — God himself. These spiritual objects, 
says Malebranche, it is probable, may be spiritually discerned, 
may make themselves known to us in themselves, per se, without 
the intervention of ideas. For though we are taught by experi¬ 
ence that we cannot immediately, and of ourselves, make known 
our thoughts to each other, but must use words, or other sensible 
signs, to which ideas are attached, this proceeds only from the dis¬ 
orders and imperfections of our present state. God has so ordered 
it for this life only. “ But when justice and order shall reign, 
and we shall be delivered from the captivity of the body, we shall 
be able to understand each other through the intimate union of 
spirit with spirit, as now do the angels in heaven.” 

But I speak here principally of material things, which certainly 
cannot be so united to our minds as to be directly perceived ; 
since they are extended, and the mind is not, so that there is no 
relation between them. Then they must be perceived through 
ideas. 

The next question is, whence come these ideas ? Not from the 
objects themselves; this hypothesis of the Schoolmen, as we have 
seen, is utterly extravagant and improbable. Not from any power 
which our own minds have of producing them ; for then they 
would be arbitrary, — formed to our liking; whereas they come 
and go, they fade and brighten, without our will and even contrary 
to our will. They were not born with us, the soul being stocked 
with them at its birth; for then they would be always present, and 
being infinite in number, and bearing countless relations to each 
other, nothing but confusion and disorder would result, and there 
would be nothing to determine, at any one moment, which should 
be irresistibly chief objects of attention. Herein, of course, by 
rejecting innate ideas, Malebranche dissents from the Cartesian 
doctrine. Neither does God, by his direct action, produce these 
ideas in our minds when they first appear there. This is the 


MALEBRANCHE. 


79 


Berkeleian hypothesis, and is denied by Malebranche, on the ground 
that God always acts by the simplest means, and it would be a 
complicated and operose sj^stem, a mere waste of energy, to create 
the same ideas over and over again, as occasion required, by inces¬ 
sant action on a countless multitude of individual minds. 

We come then to the only remaining hypothesis, which is that 
adopted by Malebranche, that these ideas exist in God, and human 
minds behold them there, through their union with Him. In truth, 
what other conception can we have of the omnipresence of God, 
than that he is present to all things and to all minds, and that 
his infinite substance is the place or home of spirits, just as bound¬ 
less space is, in one sense, the place of bodies. All things preex¬ 
isted in idea in the Divine mind, before he created them; and all 
changes which they undergo are produced by his will and power, 
and are prefigured and preordained in his infinite being. Mind 
can have intercourse with mind, spirit with spirit, since these are 
of like nature ; but mind cannot have intercourse with matter, for 
these are totally unlike, — separated from each other by the whole 
diameter of being. Thus our minds can see in God the works of 
God, provided he is willing to discover to us that in him which 
represents them. Even in our perception of external objects, 
then, we are entirely dependent upon God ; since we perceive 
only as much of them as he vouchsafes to make known to us. For, 
as the Apostle says, we are not sufficient “ of ourselves to think 
anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.” All the 
world knows from experience, that when we wish to think of 
any particular thing, we single it out from a crowd of other beings 
and things, and then apply our minds to it. Now we could not 
thus wish to single out and examine this one, if it were not 
already present to our minds, though in a general and confused 
manner. All things lie thus confusedly and indistinctly before us; 
which could not be, if God himself were not present to us, who 
incloses all beings in the infinitude and simplicity of his essence. 

We also are capable of representing to ourselves universal 
ideas, genera and species, thus beholding all in one. For in¬ 
stance : we think triangle in general, including in this idea all 
possible triangles; and we discern the relations between this and 
other general ideas. But our senses appear to give us only this 
or that particular thing, — as this one triangle ; and we could not 
thus discern many in one, we could not recognize abstract and 
general truths, which are immutable and eternal, as are the truths 
of geometry, but through the presence of him who can impart to 


80 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


us glimpses from his omniscience. St. Augustine says, “ Truth is 
increate, immutable, immense, eternal, above all things. It is true 
in itself; it does not derive its perfection from anything else. It 
renders created beings more perfect, and all minds naturally seek 
to know it. Nothing can have all these perfections but God him¬ 
self. Then the truth is God. When we see immutable and eter¬ 
nal truths, we behold Him.” Malebranche adds this qualification, 
however: “ we behold him, not because these truths are God, but 
because the ideas' on which these truths depend are in God.” 

The second leading feature of the philosophy of Malebranche, 
the doctrine of Occasional Causes, is only an obvious consequence 
and extension of the principles already established. Thus far we 
have considered only the theory of perception, and, through that, 
of cognition in general. Now we are not merely cognitive, but 
efficient, free, and, in some sense, creative beings. We are some¬ 
how enabled not only to know, but to will and to do, according to 
his righteous pleasure. As God is the light of all our'seeing, so 
also, says Malebranche, he is the cause of all our doing. I will to 
raise my arm, and my arm is lifted up. Does my mere will move 
it? Certainly not; for will is but one phenomenal manifestation 
of that whose essence is pure thought, and which, as unextended, 
iutangible, and self-involved, cannot act out of itself upon extended 
and impenetrable substance. Putting forth a volition is only the 
occasion on which my arm rises. Just so, the hands of the clock 
marking six in the morning may be the occasion on which I in¬ 
variably wake up; but it certainly is not the cause of my waking, 
for there may not be any clock within the range of my senses. 
Any change in the material universe can result only from the action 
of its omniscient and omnipotent Creator. As it was created by 
him alone, so it can be affected, moved, or changed only through 
him. True, man is free to will any action whatsoever; for in this 
consists his responsibility, the measure of his virtue or his guilt. 
But the movement or act is the mere consequent of the volition, 
the contingent effect, which may or may not happen; and whether 
't does or not, my accountability is the same. All moralists agree, 
( hat merit or demerit consists only in the intent — in the will. 
Homicide is not murder, without malice prepense. But if I will 
to commit murder, then, before God, I am guilty of murder, though 
the blow should fall short, the dagger should break, or the pistol 
should miss fire. God sometimes overrules our wicked purposes, 
so far as the mere outward act is concerned; though far more fre¬ 
quently, under that system of general laws through which the uni- 


MALEBRANCHE. 


81 


verse is administered, and which are the expression of infinite 
wisdom acting always by the simplest means,— through which, 
also, men are taught what to expect, and thereby to guide their 
conduct, — through these laws, I say, the criminal purpose is car¬ 
ried out in act, that so its deplorable consequences may stun men 
into remorse and repentance. 

Here, I confess, is the main difference between the philosophy 
of Spinoza and that of Malebranche; but it is a distinction which 
is world-wide. Both alike resolve all phenomenal action and 
change in the physical universe, outward human agency itself in¬ 
cluded, and all manifestations of that universe, into the mind of God ; 
and so its very substance, so far as we know, into the infinite action 
and sole efficiency of the Divine Nature. God alone moves and 
acts, else he would not be God, — would not be infinite or abso¬ 
lute. But the Christian Plato reserves free will — the unfettered 
purpose and intention — and so the proper individual being, of 
man, as thht with which he was endowed at creation, and which, 
in fact, constitutes creation ; while the remorseless Jew merges this 
also into the phantom of infinite substance, and linking all together 
by blind fate, erects his vision of a blind God-universe, which is 
one and all. 

According to Malebranche, there are three systems of general 
laws, through which God governs the universe, or rather maintains 
it in being and activity, creation not being a single act, but a con¬ 
tinuous and incessant manifestation of his power. First, there 
are the general laws of the communication of motion, of which laws 
the shock or impulse of bodies is the occasional or natural cause. 
In other words, the impinging of one body upon another marks 
the occasion or time at which divine power moves them both 
through a distance which is inversely as their mass. By establish¬ 
ing these laws, God has given to the sun what we call the power 
of illuminating and warming the earth, to the fire that of burning, 
and t(V bodies generally the properties by which they seem to us 
to act on each other. And it is by obeying these, his own laws, 
that God performs all which we attribute to secondary causes, or 
physical law. Secondly, there are the laws of the union of mind 
and body, the respective modes of which are reciprocally the occa¬ 
sional causes of the changes which take place in them. Thus the 
opening of the eye, and the impact of the colored rays of light 
tpon the retina, are the occasion on which God raises in my mind 
the vision of the landscape; and in return, the exercise of my will 
in a conscious effort determines the moment at which divine power 


82 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


opens my eyelids or closes my fingers. It is by these laws, says 
Malebranche, that God unites me with his other works, and ac¬ 
cording to the common opinion, gives me the power of speaking, 
walking, feeling, imagining, and the like ; and to other bodies the 
power of affecting my organs of sense. Thirdly, there are the laws 
of the union of the soul with God, — with the intelligible substance 
of the universal reason; and of these laws our attention is the oc¬ 
casional cause. When I will to reflect, and by patient thought to 
find out the relations of abstract and universal ideas to each other, 
God makes known to me, to the extent of his good pleasure, the 
truth as it is in him. If the inquiry is vain, and I follow error 
instead of truth, it is because, through failing effort and insufficient 
attention, I do not sufficiently discriminate clear and distinct from 
vague and confused ideas. 

Form what judgment you may of this theory, which appears so 
extravagant at the first glance; — accuse it of mysticism, if you 
will; there can be no doubt, not only that Malebranche accepted it 
in good faith, and believed it with his whole soul, but that it rested 
in his mind on a solid basis of evidence and cogent argumentation. 
If he chose his ground like a religious fanatic, he defended it like 
a philosopher. Moreover, the latest results of modern physical 
science, by the confession of the physicists themselves, tend rather 
to confir m than to weaken it. What mean you, asks Malebranche, 
by saying that one body can act upon another, and move it? I 
say it is contradictory to suppose that it does so. The first prin¬ 
ciple of science is that necessary law of the human mind which 
declares that every event, every change, must have a cause. Then 
a body cannot even move itself; and if so, it is a contradiction to 
suppose that it can make another body move. The essence of 
body, according to the Cartesians, is impenetrable extension, which 
is susceptible of a change of place, that is, of a change in its re¬ 
lations of distance from other bodies, or in the relative positions 
of its several parts. Any other change in it than this is incon¬ 
ceivable. Then it can be moved, but cannot move itself, as there 
would be nothing to determine whether such motion should be to 
the right or left, upward or downward. Moreover, according to 
the Cartesian doctrine already explained, the work of creation 
being incessant and continuous, or constantly repeated, every body 
being at every moment created anew here or there, in one place or 
another, it follows that it is not properly moved thither, but only 
that it ceases to exist in one locality and is created again in a 
different one; therefore God, who is its Creator, also necessarily 


\ 


MALEBRANCHE. 83 

determines its change of place, or, in other words, moves it. 
What is called the moving force of bodies being only the will of 
God creating them anew successively in different localities, they 
cannot communicate to others a power which they have not in 
themselves. Now all other corporeal change, such as generation, 
development, or decay, being reducible to local movement, either 
of the whole or of its parts, what canuot produce the latter must 
be equally incapable of bringing about the former. All motion, 
all change, is thus resolved into the doings of the Infinite One, into 
a single force omnipresent in the universe and boundless space; 
and this, directed by absolute wisdom and goodness, keeps up that 
uniform succession of antecedents and consequents which we de¬ 
nominate physical law. 

Now let these arguments pass for what they are worth; I say 
the conclusions to which they point are virtually accepted, though 
under different phraseology, by modern physicists, and fairly 
adopted into the science of our own day. The inertness of matter, 
its absolute incapacity of producing or initiating change, either in 
itself or in that with which it is in contact, is now universally ad¬ 
mitted. What the chemist analyzes, the naturalist observes, and 
the mathematician measures and computes, is the phenomenon 
created or effect produced, never the force or power which produces 
it. “ The conclusions forced upon us,” says one who speaks with 
authority on such a subject, the Duke of Argyll, “ are these: 
1. That the more we know of nature, the more certain it appears 
that a multiplicity of separate forces does not exist, but that all 
her forces pass into each other, and are but modifications of some 
one force, which is the source and centre of the rest. 2. That all 
of them are governed in their mutual relations by principles of 
arrangement which are purely mental. 3. That of the ultimate 
seat of force in any form, we know nothing directly; but the 
nearest conception we can have of it is derived from our own con¬ 
sciousness of vital power.” In other words, all force is one, and we 
nowhere have any immediate knowledge of it except as originating 
in volition, directed by intelligence, and manifested in conscious¬ 
ness. V 

In respect to the charge of Pantheism which has been brought 
against Malebranche, I cannot do better than to cite his own lan¬ 
guage translated as literally as possible. “ Created extqpsion,” 
ne says, “ is to the divine immensity, what time is to eternity. 
All bodies are extended in the immensity of God, as all different 
times succeed each other in his eternity. God is always all that 


84 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


he is, without succession of time. He fills all with his substance, 
without local extension. In his existence , there is neither past nor 
future ; all is present, immutable, eternal. In his substance , there 
is neither great nor small; all is simple, equal, infinite. God has 
created the world; but the will to create it is not past and gone. 
He will change the world ; but the will to change it is not future. 
The will of God, which has created and will create, is an eternal 
and immutable act, of which the effects change, without there be¬ 
ing any change in God. In a word, God has not been, he will 
not be, but he is. His existence and his duration (if it is proper 
to make use of that term) is an undivided whole in eternity, and 
an undivided whole in every moment that passes in that eternity. 
Just so, God is not divided, so that a part of him is in heaven, and 
another part on earth ; but he is an unbroken whole in his im¬ 
mensity, and an unbroken whole in all the bodies which are locally 
extended in his immensityhe is as a whole in all the parts of 
matter, although these are infinitely divisible. Or, to speak more 
exactly, God is not so much in the world, as the world is in him, 
or in his immensity ; just as eternity is not so much in time, as 
time is in eternity.” 

If you find it hard to rise to these lofty and abstract concep¬ 
tions, let me remind you of the parallel case of the ubiquitous 
presence of your own mind, your undivided and indivisible self .| to 
your whole body or extended sentient organism. Consciousness 
assures me that I am an absolute unit, an indivisible whole, with¬ 
out distinction of parts. It is not a part of my real self that feels, 
another part that thinks, another that remembers, and another that 
wills. But my whole individual being feels, my whole being 
thinks, remembers, or wills. It is equally evident that this indi¬ 
visible Ego of consciousness is, or exists, wherever it feels or acts ; 
for, as already explained, action is a mode of being, so that to act 
where one is not, is equivalent to saying that one can be where he 
is not, which is a contradiction. Then it follows that the soul, 
this absolute unit, is all in every part of the body; at least, in 
every part which is sentient. I cannot comprehend how this is ; 
but I know from consciousness that it is so. Then the relation 
which I know to exist between my indivisible self and my extended 
body, I can have no difficulty in believing exists also between God 
and thp universe which he has created. As I am not identified 
with my body, so neither is God identified with the universe. 
The doctrine of the anima mundi must be sharply distinguished 
from that of Pantheism. 


MALEBRANCHE. 


85 


The system of Malebranche is a compound of Cartesianism with 
Platonism. From the former he borrows, as we have seen, the 
doctrines of the essential duality of mind and matter, and that the 
essence of material things is pure extension. But he learned from 
Plato, that the proper object of the intellect is not the sensible, 
but the intelligible world, and that its proper function is the 
vision of eternal and immutable Ideas, the prototypes of all that 
is real, as these exist in their divine source, the bosom of God. 
According to Malebranche, what we call the idea of the Infinite 
in the human soul is the direct immediate vision of God himself. 
He does not, then, like Descartes, proceed from this idea to the 
great truth of the being of a God through reasoning from effect 
to cause; but he holds that there is properly no idea which repre¬ 
sents the Infinite One, as he is his own idea ; and therefore, in 
beholding the Infinite, which is constantly present to our minds, 
since the Finite is only a limitation of it, we have intuitive knowl¬ 
edge, and not merely argumentative proof, that God exists. 

Arnauld accused him of imputing imperfections to God, by 
teaching that we behold all finite and corruptible things in him; 
and it is in defending himself against this charge that the Plato¬ 
nism of Malebranche becomes manifest. The world inhabited by 
our intellect, he says, is the intelligible world, the world of ideas. 
Hence it is not the actual and material man, horse, or tree, but 
the intelligible man, the intelligible object, the type of the species, 
which we behold in God. The intellect beholds them there in 
their essence, without any of the limits and imperfections which 
belong to all objects within the domain of the senses. What is 
their essence ? It is extension, which, as beheld in God, is pure 
or intelligible extension ; that is, it is the one eternal, immutable, 
and infinite space, within which are contained all material things, 
their finite extensions being only such limited and definite portions 
of it as a finite mind can apprehend. Pure space is the omni¬ 
presence of God who fills immensity with his being; and it is the 
mirror in which we see all things, — the infinite canvas on which 
are portrayed all particular and sensible forms, as they become 
visible to us when touched with color and other material qualities 
on occasion of impressions made upon the senses. All intelligible 
things, then, are contained in intelligible extension, and are made 
known to us through the senses, just as all statues are contained 
in a block of marble whence they are drawn by the chisel of 
the sculptor. In the knowledge of sensible objects there are al¬ 
ways two factors, the idea and the mere feeling or sensation ; the 


86 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


latter is in us, while the idea alone is in God. Thus the sen¬ 
sible, the particular, the contingent, belongs to sensation and is 
what we see in ourselves. On the contrary, the immutable, the 
general, the typical form, is the idea, and this is what we behold 
in God. 



I 






\ 



4 


CHAPTER VI. 


Pascal. 

As the writings of Pascal occupy no prominent place in the 
development of the system of Descartes, I should not discuss them 
here, if circumstances had not brought about in our own day a 
revival of those doctrines in philosophy which unquestionably origi¬ 
nated with him, and of which he is still by far the clearest and most 
eloquent exponent and advocate. It is curious that neither Mr. 
J. S. Mill nor any of his critics seems to have been aware, that 
“ the Philosophy of the Conditioned ” was Sir W. Hamilton’s only 
by adoption, since it is at least two centuries old, having been set 
forth in all its essential features, even in the theological application 
which Mr. Mansel has made of it, by Pascal. Hamilton could not 
have been ignorant of this fact, since Pascal was one of his favorite 
authors, and he frequently borrows from the “ Pensdes ” arguments 
and illustrations either of the theory itself, or which stand in close 
juxtaposition with passages in which the theory is explicitly set 
forth. He probably regarded his obligations to that marvellous 
child of genius as so obvious as not to need mention. The fact is 
of some importance, since Mr. Mill openly attributes the paralo¬ 
gisms into which he thinks Hamilton was betrayed, in attempting 
to prove that the Infinite and the Infinitely Divisible are both in¬ 
conceivable, to his ignorance of mathematics. Now these “ puzzles 
concerning infinity ” are, to a considerable extent, directly borrowed 
from Pascal, who was certainly the greatest mathematical genius 
of his age. 

But before we can fairly estimate this Philosophy of the Con¬ 
ditioned, we must glance at the character and circumstances of the 
man by whom it was first thought out and enounced. Born in 
1623, and dying at the early age of thirty-nine years, Pascal was 
rather the contemporary and rival, than the follower, of Descartes. 
None of the writings of Spinoza, Malebranche, or Leibnitz had 
appeared at the time of his death. Only Arnauld and Descartes 
could have had any influence over the growth of his mind; and 


88 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


these not by imparting doctrines, but by exciting controversy and 
stimulating thought. After running a brilliant career in mathe¬ 
matics and physical science, making some of the most important 
discoveries of his century at an age when most men have not com¬ 
pleted their preliminary studies, Pascal suddenly abandoned the 
pursuits in which he had gained so much renown, renounced his 
youthful ambition, and devoted his whole soul to the contemplation 
of God and a future life. He became an ascetic and an enthu¬ 
siast ; I will not say a fanatic, as his cruelties were lavished only 
on himself. But few years remained to him, and these were sorely 
crossed by bodily pain and disease; but during this short period, 
his achievements in defence of persecuted truth and religious phi¬ 
losophy were destined to surpass in splendor his early contributions 
to human science. Apart from his merits as a thinker, his writings 
contributed to the fixation of the French language, and are still 
unrivalled for vigor, terseness, and eloquence. As a philosopher 
he is most naturally compared with Malebranche, though they do 
not seem to have had any personal intercourse. Both were men 
of ardent minds, endowed with strong imagination and lively wit, 
severe, sarcastic, and fearless ; distrustful of human science beyond 
the bounds of mathematics; disposed to underrate what man has 
accomplished and the powers of his understanding; and carrying a 
fervid piety so far as to accept even with gratitude some of the 
most appalling conclusions which theologians have ever evolved from 
Scripture. But Malebranche was more serene and expansive in the 
contemplation of religious truth, and less overwhelmed with awe 
in the presence of God, and in view of the destiny of man ; he has 
not so much vigor, but more copiousness and variety of thought. 
Pascal has more passionate energy in working out the truth, and 
greater vehemence in inculcating it. He rises almost to the gran¬ 
deur of a Hebrew prophet in denouncing the deceptions and 
wickedness of man’s heart and the vain pretensions of his under¬ 
standing. He seems to triumph in exposing the weakness and 
imperfection of human nature, and the vanity of human pursuits. 
But it is not with the mocking spirit of a satirist that he dilates 
upon the fallen and wretched condition of our race. In his eyes, 
man is weak and degraded, but not contemptible; his view is fixed 
as much upon the heights from which he has fallen, as upon the 
abyss into which he is plunged. His magnificent lamentations are 
uttered in the spirit of Jeremiah weeping over the sins of his nation, 
and pointing out the ruin with which it is menaced. He seeks to 
humble only that he may exalt; to point out the frailty aud wretch- 


PASCAL. 


89 


edness of man’s condition in this world, only that his attention may 
be diverted from it, and turned upon the grandeur of the Last 
Judgment and the unutterable splendors of the life to come. 

“ Man is so great,” he says, “ that his grandeur appears even 
from the knowledge that he has of his own misery. A tree does 
not know that it is wretched. True, it is sad to know that we are 
miserable ; but it is also a mark of greatness to be aware of this 
misery, Thus all the wretchedness of man proves his nobleness. 
It is the unhappiness of a great lord, the misery of a dethroned 
king.” The misery of our present condition is aggravated by the 
consciousness that we have fallen from a state of innocence and 
peace. Like the poet, Pascal finds there is no greater grief than 
the recollection of happiness formerly enjoyed. “ Who, but a dis¬ 
crowned monarch,” he asks, “ is grieved that he does not possess a 
throne ? Who thinks himself unhappy, because he has but one 
mouth ? And who is not unhappy, if he has but one eye ? No 
one ever thought of sorrowing, because he has not three eyes; but 
he is inconsolable, if he has but one.” 

With this striking revelation of our causes of discontent, con¬ 
trast the following sublime reflection upon the grandeur of our 
being, considered as a thinking soul. “ Man is the feeblest branch 
of nature; but he is a branch that thinks. It needs not that the 
whole universe should rise in arms to crush him. A vapor, a drop 
of water, is enough to slay him. But though the universe should 
crush him, he would still be nobler than that which causes his 
death ; for he knows that he is dying; and the universe knows 
nothing of its power over him.” It is in view of contrarieties like 
these, that Pascal exclaims, “ What an enigma, then, is man! 
What a strange, chaotic, and contradictory being! Judge of all 
things — feeble earthworm — depositary of the truth — mass of un¬ 
certainty — glory and butt of the universe ; — if he boasts himself, 
I abase him; if he humbles himself, I glory in him ; and I always 
contradict him, till he comprehends that he is an incomprehensible 
monster.” 

Pope has versified this thought so accurately, that I suspect he 
wrote with Pascal open before him. 

“ Chaos of thought and passion all confused, 

Still by himself abused, or disabused; 

In doubt his mind or body to prefer, 

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; 

Created half to rise and half to fall, 

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; 

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, 

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.” 


90 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


“ Our imagination,” says Pascal, “ so magnifies the present hour, 
through constantly spending thought upon it, and so belittles eter¬ 
nity, through not thinking about it at all, that we make an eternity 
of nothing, and a nothing of eternity; and all this has its roots so 
deeply implanted in us, that reason, though put on its guard, can¬ 
not protect us against the double error.” 

“ I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, 
nor what I myself am. I am in a terrible ignorance of all things. 
I know not what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul 
is, or even what is that very part of me which thinks what I am 
now saying, and which knows itself just as little as anything else. 
I see these frightful immensities of the universe which enclose me, 
and I find myself tied down to a little corner of this vast exten¬ 
sion, without knowing why I am placed on this spot rather than on 
that, nor why the little time during which it is permitted me to 
live is assigned to one point rather than another of the whole eter¬ 
nity which preceded me, or of the whole eternity which will fol¬ 
low me. I see only infinities in all directions, which envelope 
me like an atom, and like a shadow which endures only for a 
moment, and will never return. All that I know is, that I must 
soon die; but what I know the least of is that very death which 
I cannot avoid.” “ The eternal silence of these infinite spaces 
frightens me.” 

We can now comprehend the source, the materials, and the pur¬ 
pose of Pascal’s philosophy. His gloomy but grand conception 
of the present state of the human soul proceeds from his accept¬ 
ance of the Augustinian dogma of the fall of man, through the 
sin of Adam, from innocence and happiness to depravity and ruin, 
and his consequent helplessness and need of a Saviour. In his 
eyes, man is a ruined archangel. His conviction of sin, his con¬ 
sciousness of present misery, is aggravated by a dim recollection 
of the purity and bliss which he has forfeited. His condition is 
irremediable; he cannot make even an effort to save himself, ex¬ 
cept through the prevenient grace of God. This inability is 
stamped alike upon his understanding and his conscience, — upon 
the contradictions in which he is involved when he searches after 
truth, and the depravity of his own heart which drags him down¬ 
wards when he fain would rise. The strongest proof of Chris¬ 
tianity is, that it reveals man to himself; that it explains the enig¬ 
mas of his being, the mixture of good and evil in his present lot, 
and points out the origin and the only cure of his unhappiness. 
Jansenism was the development within the Romish church of the 


PASCAL. 


91 


same system as Calvinism among Protestants. Both are expo¬ 
sitions of the metaphysical theory which the fervid genius of the 
great African bishop, Augustine, constructed out of the writings 
of St. Paul. This system has always had a strange fascination for 
minds of great dialectical ability, united with a meditative disposi¬ 
tion and intense convictions of religious truth. It has been worked 
out by some of the most distinguished metaphysicians of the Old 
and the New World. Since the great Port Koyalists, Arnauld, 
Nicole, and Pascal, far the ablest teacher of this philosophy is our 
own Jonathan Edwards. The system had no natural home among 
French Catholics, and was soon persecuted out of existence by the 
bitter opposition of the Jesuits. But in Switzerland, Scotland, 
and New England, Calvinism has found firm foothold among the 
people, and either as its cause or its consequence, we find a strong 
taste and capacity for metaphysical studies. 

Pascal’s philosophy exists only in a fragmentary state, — a col¬ 
lection of detached thoughts and aphorisms, scribbled by him upon 
loose scraps of paper during the intervals of sickness and great 
suffering which clouded the last three years of his life. These were 
merely shuffled together without arrangement at the time of his 
death, though his editors have endeavored to distribute them into 
such order as to preserve some connection of thought. I bring 
together, translating as literally as possible, those of them which 
present a distinct and forcible outline of that “ Philosophy of the 
Conditioned,” as it is usually called, which now passes under the 
name of Sir William Hamilton. 

“ It is a weakness natural to man,” argues Pascal, “ to believe 
that he possesses the truth directly ; hence it happens, that he is 
always disposed to deny every thing which is incomprehensible to 
him ; whereas, in fact, he is naturally conversant only with false¬ 
hood, and he ought to accept as true only those propositions of 
which the contradictory seems to be false. This is why we ought 
always, when a proposition is inconceivable, to suspend our judg¬ 
ment concerning it, and not to deny it on this account, but ex¬ 
amine its contradictory; and if we find this is necessarily false, 
we may boldly affirm the former one, incomprehensible as it is. 
Let us apply this rule to our subject.” 

“ There is no mathematician who does not believe that space is 
infinitely divisible; and yet there is no one who comprehends an 
infinite division. We comprehend perfectly well, that by dividing 
a given extension ever so many times, we can never arrive at a 
portion of it which is indivisible, — that is, which has no extension. 


92 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


For what is more absurd than to maintain that, when a portion of 
space is divided, its two halves should remain indivisible and with¬ 
out any extension, so that these two nothings of extension, when 
taken together, should constitute an extension? For I would ask 
those who think they have this idea, whether they conceive clearly 
that the two indivisibles touch each other; if they touch through¬ 
out, then they constitute only one and the same thing, and yet the 
two together are indivisible; if not throughout, then they touch 
only in part; then they have parts; then they are not indivisible.” 

“ Let them confess, then, as in truth they do when they are 
pressed, that their proposition [that space is not infinitely divisible], 
is just as inconceivable as the other [that space is infinitely divisi¬ 
ble] ; and let them acknowledge that it is not by our capacity of 
conceiving things, that we ought to judge of their truth; since the 
two contradictories being both inconceivable, it is still absolutely 
certain that one of them is true.” 

In like manner, he argues : — 

“ However great a number may be, we may always conceive a 
greater one, and then one which is greater than this last, and so on 
to infinity, without ever arriving at one which cannot be any far¬ 
ther augmented. And, on the contrary, however small a number 
may be, as the hundredth or ten thousandth part, we may always 
conceive a smaller one, and so on to infinity, without arriving at 
zero or nothing.” 

“ In a word, for any movement, any number, any space, and any 
time whatsoever, there is always a greater and a less; so that they 
are all sustained between nothing and infinity, being always in¬ 
finitely remote from these extremes.” 

“ All these truths cannot be demonstrated; and yet they are 
the very foundations and principles of mathematics. But as the 
reason which makes them incapable of demonstration is not their 
obscurity, but their extreme evidence, this want of proof is not a 
fault, but rather a perfection.” 

“ Those who see clearly these truths, will be able to admire the 
grandeur and the power of nature, in this double infinity which 
surrounds us on all hands, and learn from this marvellous consid¬ 
eration to know themselves, by regarding themselves as placed be¬ 
tween an infinity and a nothing of extension, between an infinity 
and a nothing of number, between an infinity and a nothing of 
motion, between an infinity and a nothing of time ; and thereby 
one may learn to estimate himself at his true value, and form 
reflections which are worth more even than all the rest of mathe¬ 
matics.” 


PASCAL. 


93 


“ For, in fine, what is man in nature ? A nothing in regard to 
the infinite, an all in regard to nothing, a middle term betwixt 
nothing and all. Infinitely removed from comprehending the ex¬ 
tremes, the end of things and their beginning are, for him, veiled 
forever in impenetrable secrecy; and he is equally incapable of 
seeing the nothingness whence he was drawn, and the infinite in 
which he is ingulfed.” 

“ Unity added to infinity does not at all augment it, any more 
than a foot increases an infinite measure. The finite is annihi¬ 
lated in presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So 
is it with our spirit before God ; so with our justice before the Di¬ 
vine justice. There is not so great a disproportion between unity 
and infinity, as between our justice and that of God.” 

“We know that there is an infinite, and we are ignorant of its 
nature, since we know it is not true that numbers are finite ; then 
we know that there is an infinite in number, but we know not 
what it is. It is neither odd nor even, for adding unity to it does 
not change its nature. And yet it is a number, and every number 
is either odd or even.” 

“ Thus we may well know that there is a God, without knowing 
what he is.” 

“Think you it is impossible that God should be infinite, and 
yet without parts ? But I will show you a thing which is both 
infinite and indivisible; it is a point moving in all directions with 
an infinite swiftness; for it is in all places, and it is all in each 
place.” * 

In these eloquent fragments, the Law of the Conditioned is 
even more correctly enunciated than it is by Hamilton. In every 
form of existence which is quantitatively conceived, whether it be 
space, time, number, or motion, all that is positively thinkable is a 
determinate mean between these two extremes, — the infinitely 
great and the infinitely small, — both of which are inconceivable 
to thought, and yet one must be true, because its contradictory is 
equally inconceivable. And this mode of reasoning, far from be¬ 
ing novel or doubtful, is the familiar reductio ad absurdum of the 
mathematicians, whereby a proposition that is not directly provable 
is still demonstrated by showing that its contradictory must be 
false. But everywhere in his writings, except perhaps in the Ap¬ 
pendix to his “ Discussions,” Hamilton partially misstates this truth, 
by affirming that the two extremes, between which all positive 
thought lies, are contradictories of each other, instead of each hav¬ 
ing a contradictory of its own; and hence, that only one of these 


94 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


two extremes is true or real, the other being necessarily false. 
To this it may be very briefly answered, that the infinitely great 
is not the contradictory of the infinitely small; and even if it 
were, there would not be any “ mean ” between them, any neutral 
ground to be occupied by what is positive in human thought; since 
the very nature of the mathematician’s reductio ad absurdum y or 
the logician’s law of Excluded Middle, is the exclusion of any 
mean between two contradictories. The thing is so, or is not so ; 
there is no mean, no third proposition, possible. And to say of 
the two extremes, the infinitely great and the infinitely small, that 
only one of them is true, aiyl the other false, is the very opposite 
of the doctrine which Hamilton has in view. Both are true, but 
both are inconceivable ; we know that this is so, but we know not 
how it is so. 

Of course, this system is destructive of empiricism. All the 
space of which we have had experience, either through the senses 
or by the imagination, is finite or limited. But beyond these 
limits, beyond this finiteness, we have certain knowledge of the 
existence of an infinite space, of which we have had no experience. 
Pass in imagination to the outer bounds of the stellar universe, 
and there ask yourself, if you are not absolutely certain that you 
could thrust out your arm into the void space that lies beyond. 
Place the boundary where we may in thought, we are still sure 
that this experiment might be repeated. Then there is no bound¬ 
ary, no end, to space. Obliged to admit this, Mr. Mill and other 
empiricists still strove to escape from Pascal’s dilemma, by denying 
that this infinite space is inconceivable to thought. Mill affirmed 
that our conception of it is both “ real and perfectly definite ; ” 
and that “ we possess it as completely as we possess any of our 
clearest conceptions, and can avail ourselves of it as well for ulte¬ 
rior mental operations.” But his doctrine, as thus explained, in¬ 
volves him in a worse difficulty than that which he strives to shun. 
The want of experience, he tells us, is all that prevents us from 
conceiving space as finite. Ought not, then, a corresponding want 
of experience to prevent us from conceiving space as infinite ? Or 
did Mr. Mill intend to maintain the not very intelligible proposi¬ 
tion, that finite man has had experience of infinite space as infi¬ 
nite ? 

Mr..Mill’s farther attempt to characterize this “perfectly defi¬ 
nite ” conception, by saying that it is “ greater than any finite space,” 
simply confounds the infinite with the indefinite: for the question 
immediately arises, how much greater ? If you cannot tell how 


PASCAL. 


95 


much greater, then it is simply the indefinite ; if greater only by 
some finite magnitude, the answer is not true ; if infinitely greater, 
the answer is a silly truism, for it is summed up in this equation : 
Infinite Space = x -j- Infinite Space. 

The mathematician’s “infinite ” and “infinitesimal ”'are merely 
this indefinitely great and indefinitely small; that is, quantities 
which may be made as great or as small as we please, without 
affecting the use which we are to make of them. Thus defined, 
or rather thus left indefinite, the mathematician has a perfect right 
to speak of an “ infinitesimal ” of the second or third 'power, — 
expressions which Berkeley very properly ridiculed as absurd, when 
applied to the “ infinitely small ” strictly so called, which is simply 
the mathematical infinitesimal raised to an infinite power. 

It is obvious that all which has now been said is just as applica¬ 
ble to time, as it is to space. Go back in imagination to the be¬ 
ginning even of that long roll of ages in which the geologists 
endeavor to express their ideas of the history of the world’s crust; 
and you are still sure that there is a void time beyond this vast 
lapse of centuries, — a length of time in comparison with which 
even geological chronology shrinks to an indivisible moment, or 
is reduced to nothingness. In reference also to infinite time, as 
well as to infinite space, the mind does not merely, through ex¬ 
haustion, fail to see an end of it, but is sure that it has no end, 
that a termination of it is impossible. In other words, it is not by 
induction, or after the failure of repeated efforts, that we have 
gradually satisfied ourselves that a limit is not to be found ; but 
immediately, — as well before making the trial as after its failure, 
•— as well when we have passed over one mile as after we have in 
thought accomplished a thousand, the conviction comes to us, that 
there is no limit, that the line stretches out to infinity. Again, 
“ Time and Space contain in their ample bosom all finite exist¬ 
ences, and are not themselves contained in any or all of these ex¬ 
istences. All created things are situated in Space, and also have 
their own moment in Time; but Time is everywhere, and Space is 
as old as Time. Each of them exists in its entirety in every part 
of the other.” 

The practical lesson to be derived from this Philosophy of the 
Conditioned is thus well expressed by Hamilton : “ that the 
capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of 
existence; ” we know that there are realities all around us, which 
the human mind cannot comprehend or conceive. We stand, as 
has been well said, at the confluence of three immensities and two 


96 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


eternities. Above and below us, and on either hand, stretches 
the infinitude of space ; before and after the present moment 
reaches the infinitude of time. Thus encompassed by the incon¬ 
ceivable, compelled to assert its reality in the very act of acknowl¬ 
edging that it goes beyond the grasp both of the imagination and 
the intellect, we are taught at once a lesson of humility and of 
faith. In the mere consciousness of our inability to conceive 
aught beyond the relative and the finite, we are inspired with the 
belief in the existence of something unconditioned, beyond the 
sphere of all imaginable reality. We know that He is, though we 
comprehend Him not; for who can by searching find out God, 
or who can understand the Almighty to perfection. I do not say, 
with Descartes and Malebranche, that these considerations, these 
eternal and immutable truths, prove the being of a God ; but they 
suggest, they bring home to the mind, his necessary and omni¬ 
present existence with a force which mere argument could only 
weaken. 

The lesson of humility which is taught by these considerations 
is enforced by Pascal with marvellous richness of illustration. 
“ This condition of occupying intermediate ground,” he says, “ holds 
true of all our faculties. Our senses take cognizance of nothing 
that is extreme. Too much noise deafens us; too much light daz¬ 
zles us ; too great distance and too near proximity impede vision ; 
too great length and too much brevity make discourse obscure ; 
too much pleasure wearies, and harmony too long continued be¬ 
comes monotonous and unpleasant. Excessive qualities are hostile 
to us, and not subject to the senses.” Sounds of too high or too 
low a pitch become inaudible. “ To us, extreme things are as if 
they were not, or as if we were not in respect >to them. This is 
our true condition. This is what keeps our knowledge within 
fixed limits, and makes us alike incapable of knowing every thing, 
and of being totally ignorant of every thing. This is our natural 
condition, and yet it is the most opposite to our inclination. We 
burn with desire to know every thing thoroughly, and to build a 
tower which shall rise even to the infinite. But our whole edifice 
cracks, and the earth opens beneath us even to the abyss.” 

“ Instead of perceiving things as they really are, we stain with 
the qualities of our own compound being all the simple and uni¬ 
form things that are presented to us. Who would not believe, on 
seeing that we reduce all things to body and spirit, that the union 
of these two would be of all things the most comprehensible ? And 
yet it is the very thing which is most difficult to be understood. 


PASCAL. 


97 


Man is to himself the most marvellous object in nature ; for he 
cannot conceive what body is, still less what is spirit, and less than 
all, how body can be united to spirit. This is the height of his 
difficulties, and yet it is his proper being.” 

This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. “ The sci¬ 
ences have two extremities, which come together and end in the 
same thing. The first is the pure natural ignorance, in which all 
men find themselves at birth. The other extremity is the conclu¬ 
sion which all great minds come to, when, having run through all 
that man can know, they find that they know nothing, and meet in 
the same ignorance whence they set out. But it is a learned igno¬ 
rance, which has become conscious of itself.” 

Sir William Hamilton expresses the same result so nearly in 
the same words, that we must suppose that he had the “ Pensees ” 
opened before him at this passage. “ There are,” he says, “ two 
sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the 
consummation of our philosophy is ignorance. We start from the 
one, we repose in the other. They are the goals from which, and 
to which, we tend ; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course 
between two ignorances, as human life itself is only a wayfaring 
from grave to grave. If, as living creatures, 

1 we are such stuff 

As dreams are made of, aud our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep; ’ 

so, as cognizant intelligences, our dream of knowledge is a little 
light rounded with a darkness. Science is a drop, nescience is 
the ocean in which that drop is whelmed. The highest reach of 
human science is, indeed, the scientific recognition of human igno¬ 
rance : ‘ Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.’ This ‘ learned igno¬ 
rance ’ is the rational conviction by the human mind of its ina¬ 
bility to transcend certain limits. It is the knowledge of ourselves, 
the science of man.” 

To prevent this doctrine of the limitations of human knowledge, 
however, from being pushed to an injurious excess, it behooves us to 
remember that the unthinkable is not necessarily the non-existent. 
There may be a direct presentation of it to consciousness, and 
even to the senses, while we are wholly unable to conceive how it 
originated, or what is its inmost nature or essence, or even what 
are its relations to the other facts of consciousness. We may cog¬ 
nize its existence as a reality unquestionably present to our minds, 
even when we cannot think its particular mode of existence, or 
classify it with any other forms of being. Even as a phenomenon, 
7 


98 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


or mere appearance, there must be something behind it; for, as 
Kant remarked, if nothing is, nothing would appear. Thus, Time 
is certainly a mode or form of consciousness, and we apprehend it 
even as necessarily existent, being unable to imagine its non-exist¬ 
ence ; though Time as such, irrespective of the events happening 
in it, is absolutely unthinkable. It is unique and sui generis ; we 
can neither think it as substance, nor as a nonentity or the absence 
of substance. In like manned 1 , Self, the indivisible Ego of con¬ 
sciousness, always identical with itself in its successive manifesta¬ 
tions, is quite unthinkable in its essence or inmost nature, and also 
in its relations either to the body, or to the other modes of con¬ 
sciousness ; yet this inconceivableness does not prevent our con¬ 
viction of its reality from being to every one a type of what is 
most real and positive, and the strongest expression of certitude 
of which the human mind is capable. 

Another instance is thus clearly set forth by Mr. Mansel: “We 
cannot conceive creation at all, either as a springing of nothing 
into something, or as an evolution of the relative from the abso¬ 
lute ; for the simple reason that the first terms of both hypotheses 
— nothing and the absolute — are equally beyond the reach of 
human conception. But while creation as a process in the act of 
being accomplished is equally inconceivable on every hypothesis, 
creation as a result already completed presents no insurmountable 
difficulty to human thought, if we consent to abandon the attempt 
to apprehend the absolute. There is no difficulty in conceiving 
that the amount of existence in the universe may, at one time, be 
represented by A, and at another, by A -J- B ; though we are 
equally unable to conceive how B can come out of nothing, and 
how A, or any part of A, can become B while A is undiminished.” 
Indeed, in the familiar phenomenon of birth, creation as thus under¬ 
stood is constantly taking place before our eyes. In some manner 
inscrutable and inconceivable by us, what was a single or individual 
life, represented by an indivisible consciousness, suddenly becomes 
two independent lives, each attended by its separate consciousness. 
In this way, the birth of every human being is the addition of a 
unit to the sum of existence. 



0 V 



CHAPTER VII. 


Leibnitz. 

With the single exception of Aristotle, I suppose that Leibnitz 
was the most comprehensive genius that ever lived. Other men 
have been as industrious, and have become as learned, as he; they 
have also aimed at original speculation on as great a variety of 
topics. But they have sacrificed success in any one department to 
this dream of universal empire; they might have accomplished 
more, had they attempted less. Leibnitz alone, in modern times, 
attempted every thing, and left his mark on all that he undertook. 
Even at the present day, there is hardly a science, hardly a field 
for study, research, or speculation, which does not bear the im¬ 
press of his labors, or the history of which could be fully written 
without frequent mention of his name. “ As some of the ancient 
charioteers,” said Fontenelle, “ could guide eight horses yoked side 
by side, so Leibnitz drove forward all the sciences abreast.” 
Historian, jurisprudent, philologist, mathematician, physicist, theo¬ 
logian, moralist, and philosopher, even those who began by censur¬ 
ing the multiplicity of his pursuits, after reviewing what he actually 
accomplished, the new problems that he started, and the many 
pregnant hints of future discoveries for which science is indebted 
to him, have been compelled at last to doubt, as Dugald Stewart 
says, “ whether he could have accelerated the advancement of 
knowledge by the concentration of his studies more than he has 
actually done by the universality of his aims ; and whether he 
does not afford one of the few instances to which the words of the 
poet may literally be applied: si non errasset, fecerat ille minus.” 
He shares equally with Sir Isaac Newton the glory of inventing 
the Differential and Integral Calculus; his doctrine, that the force 
is not simply as the velocity, but as the square of the velocity, 
after raising a controversy that lasted over a century after his 
time, is now admitted as a first principle in science; his announce¬ 
ment of the Law of Continuity, that nature never proceeds per 
saltum , and its corollary, of the existence of a scale of beings vary- 


100 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ing by imperceptible gradations, accepted almost at once in a large 
department of research, was adopted as late as 1866 by Mr. W. 
R. Grove, the president of the British Association, as the latest 
and broadest generalization of all the science of our own day; 
the doctrines, first proclaimed by him, of the Sameness of Indis- 
cemibles, and of the need of a Sufficient Reason for all things, are 
among the most comprehensive and fruitful principles ever intro¬ 
duced into the field of purely speculative philosophy; his theory 
of Monads, in at least one of its many phases, is probably admitted 
by the most scientific minds of the present time; his system of 
Optimism, versified by Pope and ridiculed by Bayle and Voltaire, 
has not yet ceased to be eagerly discussed in the schools of sys¬ 
tematic ethics and theology; and his purely metaphysical princi¬ 
ples, of Preestablished Harmony and the criteria of Innate Ideas, 
created the modern philosophy of Germany, and, through that, are 
even now largely affecting the course of thought in cultivated 
minds throughout Europe and America. He has been accused, 
and not without reason, of a not uncommon weakness of great 
minds, the pride of conquering difficulties ; and a consciousness of 
this fault appears in his own remark, that, to him, “ all difficult 
things were easy, and all easy things difficult.” 

Godfrey William Leibnitz was born in Leipsic, on the 21st of 
June, 1646, and died in Hanover, November 14,1716. His father, 
who was Professor of Ethics in the University, died when the 
boy was only six years old, and the care of his early education 
devolved on his mother, an accomplished and excellent woman, the 
daughter of a distinguished jurisprudent. Leibnitz showed great 
precocity of talent and eagerness for learning; and as he inherited 
from his father a considerable library of well-chosen works, he 
became a devourer of books, and the study of the Latin and Greek 
classics formed the amusement rather than the task of his boyhood. 
He acquired a singular facility in the composition of Latin verses, 
and he boasts in one of his letters that, when he was only thirteen 
years of age, he wrote three hundred hexameter lines in one day, 
without admitting the elision of a single syllable. He also occa¬ 
sionally wrote verses both in German and in French ; but his 
native tongue does not appear to have been a favorite with him, 
for with one or two trifling exceptions, he wrote all his philosoph¬ 
ical works either in French or Latin. At the University of 
Leipsic, where he graduated at an early age, he studied philosophy 
under Thomasius, and mathematics under Professor Kuhn, paying 
much attention also to philology, history, and jurisprudence. No 


LEIBNITZ. 


101 


one ever verified more completely the often cited remark of 
D’Aguesseau, by seeking his amusement rather in a change of ob¬ 
jects, than in a suspension of mental labor. Before he had been 
two years out of college, he published four elaborate essays, one of 
which was on a new method of studying jurisprudence, and another 
was a treatise against atheism. Baron Boineburg, who was high 
in office under the Elector of Mayence, conceived a favorable 
opinion of his character and abilities, and held out to him the hope 
of employment in affairs of state. Under encouragement received 
from this minister, Leibnitz published at Frankfort, in 1670, his 
first considerable philosophical work, an edition of Nizolius “ De 
veris Principiis et vera Ratione philosophandi,” with supplementary 
essays and notes. Two years afterwards, he went to Paris, on a 
sort of diplomatic mission from Boineburg, to induce Louis XIV. to 
make an expedition against Egypt, and thereby counteract the 
menacing attitude of the Turkish power in Europe, instead of 
turning his arms against Germany, which would be to cooperate 
with the Turks. The negotiation failed, but the history of it is 
curious, when considered as an anticipation of the project which 
was brought nearly to a successful result more than a century after¬ 
wards by Napoleon. Leibnitz remained over four years in Paris, 
and also visited London, making the acquaintance of the most 
eminent men of letters and science in the two cities, among whom 
were Arnauld, Huyghens, Oldenburg, Boyle, and two distinguished 
mathematicians, Collins and Tschirnhausen. Intercourse with these 
men did much to shape and develop his subsequent speculations 
and endeavors. 

The difficulty is great of rendering any connected account of 
the opinions of Leibnitz; for he published no one work of any 
length or method, giving a consecutive view of his system as a 
whole ; probably from a consciousness that all his doctrines could 
not be forced into complete harmony with each other. His writ¬ 
ings consist of a huge mass of correspondence with nearly all the 
literary and scientific men in Europe; of short papers communi¬ 
cated to philosophical societies; and of a few occasional and hasty 
publications of greater length, which are so carelessly executed that 
they might be termed ephemeral, were it not for the importance 
and novelty of some of the theories therein set forth. After his 
opinions were matured, he prepared only two treatises of consid¬ 
erable length, on purely philosophical subjects, apart from his 
contributions to mathematical and physical science. These are his 
“ Theodicy, or a Discourse on the Conformity of Faith and Reason, 


102 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. - 


and Essays on the Goodness of God, Human Free Will, and the 
Origin of Evil,” — a work written in answer to Bayle, and con¬ 
taining in outline his system of Optimism, and his doctrines of the 
Sameness of Indiscernibles and the need of a Sufficient Reason ; 
and his Nouveaux Essais sur V Entendement Humain , a work 
which was not published till about half a century after the death 
of its author. It is a criticism on Locke, setting forth the writer’s 
theory of Innate Ideas, with incidental mention of his other meta¬ 
physical speculations. In his busy life, Leibnitz had no leisure 
thoroughly to digest his opinions into method and system. He 
was by no means a mere student of science and philosophy ; he 
was also a diplomatist, a statesman with all the cares of office, a 
courtier, and a man of the world; he stood high in the favor of 
princes, and was connected with some of the most important nego¬ 
tiations of his time. In a large sense, his career belongs to the 
history of Europe. 

The logic and method of Leibnitz differ considerably from those 
of Descartes, though both are Rationalists, rejecting empiricism, 
as affording no sure foundation for science ; in other words, they 
place the intuitions of reason and the deductive conclusions of the 
understanding far above the generalizations of experience. Facts 
obtained by observation may be used to verify, but never to origi¬ 
nate or supersede, the primary truths of philosophy and science, 
which can be evolved only by meditation and the rigorous pro¬ 
cesses of logic; that is to say, mathematical reasoning afEords the 
only type of certainty and precision. 

Leibnitz begins an exposition of his method by saying that ideas 
are clear or obscure, according as they do, or do not, enable us to 
distinguish objects as wholes from each other; they are distinct or 
confused, according as we can, or cannot, discern the marks or at¬ 
tributes whereby one object is distinguished from another; they 
are adequate or inadequate, in so far as we have, or have not, a clear 
and distinct notion of each of these marks or attributes, as well as 
of the substances in which they inhere. Now the senses often give 
us clear notions, less frequently distinct ones, and never adequate 
ideas of the objects perceived. Thus, even a child clearly distin¬ 
guishes a circle from a triangle, each figure being roughly consid¬ 
ered as a whole ; but he has no distinct notion of the many geo¬ 
metrical properties or attributes, which are peculiar to each of these 
forms; and still less can he adequately conceive all the conse¬ 
quences, which the mathematician perceives to flow necessarily from 
each of these properties or attributes. Only the intuitions of pure 


LEIBNITZ. 


103 


reason, guided or restricted by the dialectical processes of the un¬ 
derstanding, can attain to perfectly clear, distinct, and adequate 
ideas ; these alone are perfect, and never can be derived from sense. 
Number, in the abstract, is perhaps the only instance that can be 
given of an idea perfect and pure. A given object, such as a piece 
of iron, may have been observed by the senses for an indefinite 
time, and at last, only accident makes us aware that it is magnetic. 
We can never be sure that it does not possess many other, as yet 
unknown, properties; and still less can we trace all the conse¬ 
quences that might follow from its attributes, so far even as already 
known. An infinitude of experiments would have to be tried 
before these could all be determined. Sensible ideas, as they are 
never adequate, admit only of a Nominal definition, which does 
not express their essence at all, and enumerates but few of their 
marks. A Real definition is possible only of adequate and intuitive 
ideas, such as the geometer frames of his various figures, and which, 
through establishing the compatibility with each other of the vari¬ 
ous elements of the idea, gives us to know a 'priori, or antecedently 
to experience, the possibility of the idea as a whole. Thus, the 
geometer knows at once, by intuition, that a triangle, or a three- 
sided figure enclosing space, is a possible conception; and that a 
bilinear, or two-sided, figure, thus enclosing space, is impossible. 

According to Leibnitz, again, an idea is true when it is possible, 
and false when it implies a contradiction, as in the case of the two- 
sided figure. Pure intuition of possible premises, and the resolu¬ 
tion of complex ideas into simple or irreducible notions, form the 
only source of all absolute and demonstrative truth. In other 
words, deductive syllogistic reasoning from conceivable premises — 
that is to say, from premises conceived clearly, distinctly, and ade¬ 
quately — is the art of infallibility, that universal mathematics, 
which Descartes dreamed of, the syllogistic machine, which is the 
only road to necessary truth. Syllogism, in fact, is the only form 
of necessary reasoning. Experience, the evidence of the senses, 
can lead only to contingent results, to merely probable conclu¬ 
sions. 

But though logic, beginning with intuition and governed in its 
course by the necessary laws of thought, is sufficient for the dis¬ 
covery of the true, it cannot, in itself alone, conduct us to the 
real. The true is the possible, or the conceivable; the real is the 
actual. The former, the true, is what God eternally thinks; the 
latter, the real, is the product not so much of his thought, as of 
his will; it is what he has created, the world which he has chosen, 


104 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


out of all possible worlds, to bring into existence by the decree 
of his omnipotent will. How then can the human mind, among 
all the possible worlds which it can conceive, detect that one which 
God has made actual, or has reduced from a possibility to a fact ? 
By reason again; by the light of an a ■priori principle, which domi¬ 
nates, enlightens, and regulates experience;—the principle that 
nothing exists, or can exist, without a sufficient reason for its exist¬ 
ence. Now the only conceivable sufficient reason why this uni¬ 
verse which we inhabit, and of which we are a part, has been 
created by an infinitely wise and good God, is, that it is the best 
of all possible worlds. An infinitely wise and good being could 
choose only the best. And what is the best ? Evidently that world 
in which there is the utmost possible order, harmony, perfection, 
and beauty. This world in which we live must unite all these per¬ 
fections, whether our poor finite understandings can detect and be 
convinced of them, or not. 

This is Leibnitz’s famous system of Optimism. It is a bold at¬ 
tempt to sound to the very bottom the deep and dark problem of 
the origin of evil, to demonstrate the conformity of faith with reason, 
and to reconcile the ways of God to man. Pope sums it all up in 
six lines: — 

“ All nature is but art unknown to thee; 

All chance, direction, which thou canst not Bee; 

All discord, harmony not understood; 

All partial evil, universal good; 

And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, 

One truth is clear, whatever is is right.” 

Pope, as is commonly supposed, got his philosophy from Boling- 
broke ; and if so, Bolingbroke certainly took it from Leibnitz. 
Read the “ Essay on Man ” over again, and you will find the whole 
system expounded in it to be this doctrine of Optimism, founded 
on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and the theory of a scale of 
beings passing into each other by imperceptible gradations, and so 
bound together as one whole, deduced from the Law of Continuity. 
If you would have a bitter, mocking satire on it, containing also 
about all the facts and arguments that can be urged against it, read 
Voltaire’s “ Candide.” Bayle, the contemporary of Leibnitz, and 
the Voltaire of the seventeenth century, argued against and ridi¬ 
culed it from the outset; and the “ Theodicy ” of Leibnitz, occa¬ 
sional, like most of his other publications, is his reply to Bayle. 
Crousaz, the Swiss philosopher, attacked Pope’s “ Essay on Man,” 
as an indirect mode of attacking Leibnitz ; Warburton in England, 
and Vattel in Switzerland, replied to Crousaz and defended Pope. 


LEIBNITZ. 


105 


Leibnitz is careful to explain that “ the world,” as here under¬ 
stood, does not mean merely the total arrangement of objects exist¬ 
ing and events taking place at any one time, but includes also the 
inevitable antecedents and consequences of any such arrangement, 
considered as extending throughout all time, or throughout the 
whole history of the universe. “ What I mean by world,” he says, 
“ is the whole succession, as well as collection, of all existing things, 
60 that it may not be said that there might be many worlds in dif¬ 
ferent times and places; for it would be necessary to take these 
all together, in order to constitute “ a world,” or, if you will, a uni¬ 
verse. And even if all times and all places were filled, it would still 
be true that they might have been filled in an infinite number of 
ways; and thus, there would still be an infinite number of possible 
worlds, of which God must have chosen the best, since otherwise 
perfect wisdom would have acted without a Sufficient Reason.” 
What is truly best must be best on the whole, and in the long run, 
full regard being had to all the connected circumstances, both in 
the past and the future, which are indissolubly bound up with it by 
an absolute or metaphysical necessity. 

“ Some may object by saying that there might have been a world 
without the sin and suffering which are apparent now and here. 
Granted ; but I deny that such would have been a better world. 
For in every possible world, all things are connected together; the 
universe, whatever it may be, is all of a piece, like an ocean; the 
least movement extends its effect to any distance, though the effect 
becomes less in proportion to its distance. God has regulated 
every thing there beforehand, once for all, having foreseen the 
prayers, the good and bad actions, and all the rest; so that every 
thing has contributed ideally, before its existence, to the resolution 
which has been formed concerning the* existence of all things. 
Thus, nothing could be changed in the universe, any more than in 
a given number, without changing its essence by destroying its 
numerical identity. Thus, if the least evil which happens in the 
world should be taken away, it would no longer be this world ; 
which, all counted, all taken together, has been found the best 
possible world by the Deity who has chosen it. 

« True, we can imagine possible worlds without sin and without 
s iffering, and make romances, Utopias, Severambias, of them ; but 
these same worlds would still be very inferior in good to ours. I 
cannot make you see this in detail, for how can I know and repre¬ 
sent infinite worlds, and compare them with each other? But you 
«ught to judge, as I do, that it is so, from the effect , because God 


106 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


has chosen this world such as it is. Moreover, we know that an 
evil often produces a good which could not have happened without 
this evil. Even two evils have often made a great good. 

“ 1 Et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant.’ 

So two liquids sometimes produce a solid, and two cold and opaque 
bodies may make a fire. A general sometimes makes a happy 
blunder, which wins a great battle; and in the Romish church, on 
Easter eve, don’t they sing,— 

“ ‘ 0 certe necessarium Adse peccatum, 

Quod Christi niorte deletum est? 

O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum 
Meruit habere Redemptorem! ’ ” 

The whole force of the argument here depends upon the doctrine 
of the absolute necessity inherent in the nature of finite things, 
whereby a greater good could not be produced without the permis¬ 
sion of temporary or apparent evil as a means for its production, 
any more than two mountains could exist without a valley between 
them. Created things, argues Leibnitz, for the very reason that 
they were created , must be devoid of the infinity and perfection 
which can exist only in Him who is increate and eternal; and 
hence they are necessarily subject to all the evils which are inher¬ 
ent in finitude and imperfection. This is what he calls the Meta¬ 
physical evil inseparable from this world’s affairs, which even om¬ 
nipotence cannot remove, since the supposition of its removal would 
be a contradiction and an absurdity; and it is easy to show, that 
what are called Physical and Moral evils are among its necessary 
consequences. But progress in virtue is a greater good than the 
mere attainment of happiness; well-being is subordinate to well¬ 
doing, and must often be sacrificed in order that the latter may be 
possible. Thus, each individual virtue presupposes the existence 
either of unhappiness or wrong. Courage cannot even be con¬ 
ceived to exist without danger, nor fortitude without pain. There 
could be no temperance without the liability to excess, and no 
benevolence unless there were wants to satisfy or sufferings to re¬ 
lieve. Even veracity would be no virtue, if one could not help 
telling the truth. He who could not do harm or wrong might still 
be innocent, it is true; but there would be no merit in his inno¬ 
cence. In short, merit consists in withstanding temptation, alle¬ 
viating pain, and opposing wrong; so that, without the presence of 
these evils, there would be nothing to praise and nothing to blame. 
We may boldly affirm the optimistic doctrine, then, that a world 


LEIBNITZ. 


107 

without either suffering or sin would not be an improvement on 
the world as-now constituted. 

The key to the proof of Leibnitz’s system is the sharp distinc¬ 
tion between necessary and immutable truths on the one hand, and 
empirical or contingent considerations, — truths of fact or physical 
laws, as we should call them, — on the other. The former consist 
of the original intuitions of pure reason, like the Principle of Suffi¬ 
cient Reason, the necessary laws of Thought as set forth in pure 
Logic, the axioms of Mathematics, and the like- These, with the 
necessary syllogistic deductions from them, are metaphysical verities, 
which cannot be overruled by God himself, any more than he could 
make two and two to be five, or a dishonest action to be right and 
obligatory. They are God’s truths, for they are what he eternally 
thinks, and they constitute his nature ; to suppose that he would or 
could abrogate them, would be to suppose that he should act con¬ 
trary to his own nature; that is, that he should cease to be God. 
And this distinction between truths is applied also to existences. 
There are absolute and necessary existences, such as those of God 
himself, of space, of time, of everlasting right or the moral law. 
To ask if the Almighty could annihilate space, or stop the flight of 
time, or contradict the truths of mathematics, or reverse the obliga¬ 
tions of the moral law, is to ask if God could annihilate himself, — 
if he could cease to be. 

On the other hand, there are contingent existences, such as that 
of all real objects; and there are empirical truths, such as physical 
laws, even those of the highest generalization and the broadest 
scope, —- the Laws of Motion, for instance, being included. 
These are the results of God’s free will and creative agency, and 
are continued only during his good pleasure. They are discovered 
by observation and generalized by induction. Infinite power could 
reduce all created things to the nothingness whence they were 
drawn ; — could reverse the laws of nature, cause stones to fly up¬ 
ward ; motion to be not in right lines, but in curves ; particles of 
matter to repel instead of attracting each other; grapes to grow 
on thorns and figs on thistles. Nay, we have not the slightest 
assurance that he will not do so the very next hour; only we are 
so much the slaves of habit, so prone to think that what has been 
will be, though there is not the slightest necessity for 60 thinking, 
that we find it hard to believe that he will. Let the Empiricists 
and the Positivists talk as they may about the universality and the 
certainty of physical law ; if they mean thereby the necessary 
continuance of such law one hour beyond the present time, their 


108 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


assertion rests upon no scientific evidence whatever, but merely on 
an innate belief, or an acquired though persistent habit of thought. 
Infinite power could instantly destroy every object in this room, 
you and me included. But there is something which even infinite 
power cannot do: annihilate the space which this room now oc¬ 
cupies, or call back the hour which has just elapsed. 

Now observe, Leibnitz rests his system of Optimism, his proof 
that this is the best of all possible worlds, on principles and reason¬ 
ing of the former sort, that is, on necessary and immutable truths. 
Accordingly, any argument against that system drawn from facts, 
from sensible evidence, from citing instances of actual sin and 
misery, corruption and death, — is simply irrelevant and illogical. 
If facts seem to contradict mathematical conclusions, so much the 
worse for the facts; correct your observations of them ; try your 
experiments over again, for they may be wrong; mathematics and 
metaphysics must be right. The office of observing facts is to 
verify theoretical conclusions, never to contradict them. One who 
should attempt to invalidate the geometrical proof, that the three 
angles of every triangle are precisely equal to two right angles, 
by cutting a triangle out of wood, actually measuring its three 
angles, and finding that they did not sum up just 180 degrees, 
would very properly be laughed at. “ This,” said Euler, at the 
close of a long and abstruse mathematical investigation, “ this is 
contrary to all experience; and yet it is true .” Professor Peirce 
showed an equally daring confidence in his mathematical analysis, 
on occasion of the discovery of the planet Neptune. The calcula¬ 
tions of Adams and Le Yerrier proved that a new planet ought 
to be found at a certain precise spot in the heavens ; the astrono¬ 
mers pointed their telescopes to the spot, and there it was. Mr 
Peirce went over the computations again more carefully, and found 
that the theory and the fact did not coincide after all. The agree¬ 
ment between the prediction and the fact was merely accidental; 
the observed planet was not the same with the predicted planet. 
No matter about the former being seen just at the right spot ; it 
had no business to be there. That one was found there was only 
Le Yerrier’s good luck. And further investigation showed that 
Mr. Peirce was right. Just at that epoch — the only time, I be¬ 
lieve, in a period of seventy or eighty years — the observed planet 
and the calculated planet happened to be nearly in the same line 
of vision as seen from this earth; but the one was not the same as 
the other, for the one was at the distance of thirty, and the other 
at the distance of thirty-six. With an equally lofty confidence, a 


LEIBNITZ. 


109 


follower of Leibnitz might contemptuously put aside the sarcasms 
of Bayle and Voltaire, founded on the observed presence of sin and 
misery among men. The apparent contradiction must be capable 
of being explained away, whether we succeed in so explaining it, or 
not. The “ Theodicy ” contains Leibnitz’s attempt at an explana¬ 
tion of the facts, most of which was repeated by Pope. 

This contemptuous estimate of mere empiricism, when it conflicts 
with the deductions of pure reason, is one of the characteristics in¬ 
herited from Leibnitz by all the modern philosophy of Germany. 
Descartes is not more evidently the founder of the French school, 
the progenitor of Malebranche and Cousin, than Spinoza and Leib¬ 
nitz are of the German transcendentalists, of the philosophy that 
transcends experience, — of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. 
The English school, with a strong tendency to sensualism or empiri¬ 
cism, was established by Hobbes and Locke. Truths made known 
to us a priori , or antecedently to experience, with their attributes 
of universality and necessity, have been the fundamental doctrines 
of German philosophy ever since the time of Leibnitz. 

It was of a piece with the towering ambition and self-confidence 
of Leibnitz, to regard this system of Optimism, and this mode of 
establishing by intuition and demonstration all the truths, not only 
of philosophy, but of theology, as a possible means of reconciling 
all differences among Christians, of healing the schism between 
the Reformed and the Catholic churches, and of once more unit¬ 
ing all true-hearted believers into one fold and under one Shepherd. 
He had power and consideration enough to interest many of the 
princes and great minds of Europe in this scheme ; he was actively 
employed in negotiations for the purpose, all his skill as a diplom¬ 
atist being brought into play ; he corresponded with the great 
Catholic bishop, Bossuet, on the subject; and at one time, seems 
actually to have had hopes of success. But the pride, the obsti¬ 
nacy, the selfishness, and the ignorance of men ! 

Another proof of the unequalled presumption, as well as the 
marvellous genius of Leibnitz, was his scheme of a universal and 
real character; — that is, of a writing which should express all 
thought by a series, not merely of conventional, but of natural 
symbols, having the utmost brevity and precision, and equally in¬ 
telligible to men of all nations and tongues under heaven. Chi¬ 
merical as such a scheme may appear, it cannot; be denied that, in 
the Arabic numerals and the symbolic notation of Algebra and 
the Infinitesimal Calculus, to which that of Chemistry, and in some 
degree of Logic, has recently been added, we have approximations 


110 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


to such a character, carried out on a small scale, indeed — mainly 
limited to the relations of quantity, but of marvellous power in ab¬ 
breviating and facilitating the most abstruse processes of thought, 
as well as the communication of it to others. In fact, could Leib¬ 
nitz now revisit the earth, he might well say of these very improve¬ 
ments in the language of Chemistry and Logic, the vast importance 
of which only the adepts in those two sciences can thoroughly ap¬ 
preciate, “ This is my scheme; so far as it has gone, it is the very 
realization of my endeavor. I gave out the problem, I indicated 
the means of solving it, and the advantages which would follow 
from its solution ; and only the multifarious occupations of my busy 
life prevented me from accomplishing more in this direction, by 
my unassisted efforts, than all the savans of Europe have done by 
a century and a half of labor.” As it was, the project furnished 
only one other illustration of the philological attainments, the 
philosophical genius, and the Titanic aims of the man who could 
thus strive to unite all the nations of the earth in the bonds of a 
common religious faith and a universal language. If the person 
ever lived who could have remedied the catastrophe at Babel, fur¬ 
nished a common method for all the sciences, and blotted out all 
the differences among the churches, that man was Leibnitz. It 
should be mentioned that he wrote equally well in three languages, 
in addition to large attainments in many others, and that the con¬ 
trivance of an admirable notation for the Infinitesimal Calculus, 
far superior to that of Sir Isaac Newton, and now universally 
adopted even by the English, was exclusively his woi*k. 

The Monadology of Leibnitz, which includes most of what is 
- original and peculiar in his system of philosophy, is, in the main, a 
deduction from his doctrine of Innate Ideas, and from his three 
fundamental axioms, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the Same¬ 
ness of Indiscernibles, and the Law of Continuity. Indeed, these 
three may properly be considered as one, since it can be easily 
shown, that the second and third are necessary corollaries from the 
first. The full enouncement of this single axiom is, that no phe¬ 
nomenon can exist or take place, and no judgment be valid, with¬ 
out a Sufficient Reason why it is so rather than otherwise. Then 
the Law of Continuity necessarily follows, since there is no Suffi¬ 
cient Reason why a series should be broken at one point rather than 
another, or why two places should be filled, while the intermediate 
one is vacant. We are also compelled to admit the remaining ax¬ 
iom, that there are not in the universe two perfectly similar— that 
is, absolutely indiscernible — beiugs or objects; if there were, God 


LEIBNITZ. 


Ill 


would act without Reason in assigning them to different places and 
times, as must be done if they are numerically distinct, since two 
things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Hence we 
are justified in assuming that nature does nothing per saltum, or 
by abrupt transitions; but all events, all objects, proceed from in¬ 
finitesimal germs, develop by successive and extremely minute steps, 
and pass into each other by imperceptible gradations; the process 
being all the while checked by the counter principle, of the Same¬ 
ness of Indiscernibles, so that, however near each other, no two 
are ever absolutely indistinguishable, for then they would coalesce, 
and become one and the same thing. In the whole realm of nature 
there cannot be found two portions of matter, two minds, two 
events, two anythings, that are perfectly equal and similar. No 
two leaves of the same tree, no two faces or two characters in 
however vast a multitude of persons, no two roses on one stalk, no 
two drops of water, ever are perfect counterparts of each other. 
This is a fact of experience, which confirms and justifies the a priori 
principle. History — experience — never exactly repeats itself. 
God puts his individual mark upon each particular thing and inci¬ 
dent ; and yet each one slides and shades into that which is nearest 
to it without shock or leap, but with a delicacy surpassing the nicest 
discrimination. 

Here at once is the germinal principle of the Infinitesimal Cal¬ 
culus,— either that which put Leibnitz upon the track of this grand 
invention, or, what is perhaps more probable, which he deduced or 
generalized from it, after the mathematical contrivance was per¬ 
fected. The infinitesimal element of every curve may be regarded 
without error as a straight line, into which it passes by imperceptible 
gradations; and yet it is not straight, for if it were, integrating it 
would not reproduce the curve, but would generate a straight line. 
In like manner, a body never passes from rest to motion, or from 
motion to rest, except by imperceptibly fine degrees, though an 
infinitude of these may take place in a moment of time. Even 
when a bullet is propelled by the explosion of gunpowder, the ve¬ 
locity rises from the minimum to the maximum by uniform increase. 
Leibnitz, indeed, maintains, what I believe is now universally ad¬ 
mitted, that there is no absolute rest in the universe; and he is 
aiso the author of what has been claimed as a very recent discovery 
in science, the conservation of the same amount of force forever, 
none ever being properly generated, and none really destroyed. 
“Thought is to the soul,” he says, “what motion is to body. A 
soul absolutely without thought, and a body absolutely without 


112 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


motion, appear to me equally contrary to nature and without ex¬ 
ample in the world.” This follows, indeed, from his Law of Con¬ 
tinuity ; as the transition from one to the other would be a positive 
saltus, or shock of entire change from one thing to its opposite or 
contradictory. “A substance once in action,” he argues, “ will be 
always in action; for all impressions on it, or impulses of it, con¬ 
tinue, and are only mingled with new ones, as in the parallelogram 
of forces. By striking a body, we excite in it an infinity of little 
whirlpools, as in a liquid; for in fact, every solid has a degree of 
liquidity, and every liquid a degree of solidity, and these internal 
whirlings can never be entirely stopped. I should prefer the word 
firmness, or still better, consistency or cohesion, to hardness; all 
bodies have some degree of cohesion, as we see from the drops of 
water or mercury ; as they also have some degree of fluidity. Thus, 
wax is always somewhat soft, even before heat has reduced it to a 
fluid. Thus, in my opinion, the atoms of Epicurus, the hardness of 
which is supposed to be invincible, cannot exist, any more than the 
subtle matter, ‘ perfectly fluid,’ of Descartes.” 

All this is only the modern chemical doctrine of molecular action, 
and that heat is merely a form of motion. Body is never without 
some heat, as none is ever found at an absolute zero of tempera¬ 
ture. Then there is always some molecular action within it, and 
this is the motion in an infinity of little whirlpools, which was 
conceived by Leibnitz. We are not so much struck here, I think, 
with the anticipation of some of the most renowned scientific dis¬ 
coveries of our own day, though this is sufficiently remarkable, as 
we are with the fact, that these doctrines are now claimed as the 
legitimate results of the Baconian method, — of experimentation 
and the logic of induction ; whereas they were anticipated by Leib¬ 
nitz through rigorous deduction from his three a priori axioms, 
and therefore they appear, in his view of them, not as isolated 
contributions to a loose aggregate of scientific facts, but as articu¬ 
lated and intertwined with each other, and as necessary component 
parts of one system of philosophy. They are not generalized from 
experience, but demonstrated by reasoning from abstract principles, 
like the theorems of geometry. 

As there is no body without movement, argues Leibnitz, so there 
can be no space without body. The doctrine of a plenum, or the 
denial of the possibility of a perfect vacuum, is another consequence 
of the Leibnitzian axioms. Were there an absolutely void space, 
there would be a saltus, a shock of transition, from this to pure 
body or corporeity, which is impossible. This mode of reasoning 


LEIBNITZ. 


113 


is carried further, to a denial of the objective existence both of 
time and space as separate entities. Both are only relations, and 
as such, are mere conceptions of the mind, which have nothing an¬ 
swering to them externally, or apart from the intellect. This is a 
very dose approximation to the doctrine which Kant long after¬ 
wards made so famous. Time and space are necessities of the in¬ 
tellect, or forms of sense necessary for bringing about an intelli¬ 
gible conception of existing things. Space, says Leibnitz, is the 
relation of coexistent things to each other, just as time is the rela¬ 
tion of successive existences. They are nothing apart from the 
existences contained in them. The universe is infinite, as are the 
power and wisdom of its Creator, — infinite both in extension and 
in succession; for if it were limited and finite, there would be no 
Sufficient Reason why it should be here rather than there, or now 
rather than at any preceding or subsequent moment. There may 
be development and change, — passages from, through, and towards 
infinitely varied forms of being ; but there can be no saltus, no 
leap, such as would be creation or annihilation at any one time. 
The soul is necessarily immortal. Again, were there a void space 
or a void time, two equal contiguous portions of either would be 
perfectly similar to each other, and there would be nothing whereby 
the first could be distinguished from the second; and this, by the 
law of the Identity of Indiscernibles, is impossible. 

To diminish the quantity of matter in the universe, — that is, to 
suppose it less than infinite, — would be to diminish the number 
of objects upon which God might exercise his goodness; and this 
would be to derogate from the perfection of his act. There is no 
possible reason for limiting the quantity of matter; and if we sup¬ 
pose the limitation of it to be arbitrary, we affirm that God could 
act without a reason, which would be inconsistent with his infinite 
wisdom. In like manner, if active force were lost or dissipated in 
any part of the universe, through the physical laws which God has 
established there, then a new act would be necessary to restore 
this force, just as a workman must make a fresh effort to remedy 
the imperfection, or the wear and tear, of his machine ; and this 
would be a disorder or defect, in relation not only to us as human 
beings, but to God himself. But we are not justified in imputing 
iny imperfection to the author and finisher of all things. “ When 
I say,” continues Leibnitz, “ that God has opposed to such disor¬ 
ders. sufficient remedies taken beforehand, I do not mean that he 
suffered the disorders to come first, and then applied the remedies ; 

8 




114 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


but my doctrine is, that he found means beforehand to prevent the 
occurrence of the disorders.” 

The purpose of Leibnitz in the Monadology is to ascertain the 
existence, and determine the nature, of the first or simplest ele¬ 
ments of substance, the primal units of being, into which all things 
may be resolved. There must be such units, he argues, as other¬ 
wise there could be no compound or aggregate, since the very idea 
of a compound is that it consists of an aggregation of what is 
simple. These primary elements of being, which in themselves are 
absolutely simple and indivisible, he calls Monads. They are 
metaphysical units, or the units both of matter anjl mind, both of 
organic and inorganic substance. They are not only the seeds or 
germs of all things, but they constitute all things, as all composite 
being is made up of them, and can be resolved into them. Life is 
inherent in them, since, in the ordinary course of nature, they 
never really begin or cease to be. Originating only in the primi¬ 
tive act of creation, and incapable of dissolution because they do 
not consist of parts, they cannot perish except by annihilation. 
Though, the action of all of them is harmonious, each conspiring, 
so to speak, with all the others, so as to keep up not only the in¬ 
dividual harmony of each separate living organism that is constitu¬ 
ted by them, but also the general harmony of the universe, yet no 
one Monad ever directly acts upon another, so as to produce any 
change in it, or in any way to affect its mode of existence. Each 
is an independent creation, the whole series of its modes and acts 
throughout its history being determined solely from within, being 
only the development of those inherent energies and propensities 
with which God endowed it at the moment of its emanation from 
him. Each would run through its whole appointed cycle of acts 
and developments, precisely as it now does, though it were alone 
in the universe. Innate force , incessant activity, is its essence, its 
nature; it always acts, it is never acted upon. It is never passive. 
One Monad cannot act on any other by impact, argues Leibnitz, 
because being absolutely indivisible, no such transposition or altered 
relation of parts can take place within it as is possible in a com¬ 
posite body. No change, then, can be produced in its external 
state ; and as perfectly simple, “ it has no windows,” through which 
any foreign agency could enter or go out, so as to affect its inter¬ 
nal condition. No two Monads are perfectly alike, this being for¬ 
bidden by the Law of Indiscernibles; the only difference between 
them consists in the greater or less development of their internal 
and innate energies. Inorganic nature is an aggregate of undevel- 


LEIBNITZ. 


115 


oped or sleeping Monads ; an animal’s life is a dreaming Monad ; 
man is a Monad that has been waked up. These are not distinguish¬ 
able in kind, but only in degree; the difference between them, im¬ 
mense as it appears, consists only in the widely separated stages of 
development which they have respectively attained. 

The doctrine of Preestablished Harmony is pithily expressed 
by Leibnitz, when he says, “ every body acts as if there was no 
soul, and every soul acts as if there was no body, and yet both act 
as if each was influenced by the other.” And in like manner, 
every part of the universe harmonizes with every other part, though 
without the slightest mutual dependence or interaction. The doc¬ 
trine of a plenum leads us to conceive each Monad as standing in 
definite relations to every other Monad, and hence that every change, 
wherever produced, is propagated through the whole mass, though 
in a ratio diminishing with the distance. Each Monad, then, un¬ 
dergoes some corresponding change, and thus each becomes a 
microcosm reflecting the macrocosm , or a perfect mirror of the 
universe. The same conclusion follows from the doctrine, that the 
boundless knowledge which may be developed in the highest state 
of being, and which, as such, includes a comprehension of all things 
in their relations to each other, is all really innate in every Monad, 
even in its lowest and most rudimental stage. Creation, in fact, 
consisted in first establishing, once for all, the laws of this perfect 
unity and harmony. The drama of the universe was entirely ar¬ 
ranged, all the parts were assigned, and every incident, thought, and 
motion foreseen and provided for, when that universe was first 
called into being ; otherwise, the prescience and omnipotence which 
we attribute to its Creator would be words without meaning. 

According to Descartes, as we have seen, the universe is made 
up of matter and mind, which have nothing in common, the essence 
of the former consisting in extension, and of the latter in thought. 
Between these two there is an unfathomable abyss, which can be 
bridged over only by the incessant action of God, as in Male- 
branche’s doctrine of Occasional Causes, since otherwise there 
would be no possible communication between them. But accord¬ 
ing to the Law of Continuity, argues Leibnitz, there cannot be 
such a gulf, or saltus , between unthinking Matter and unextended 
Thought. Moreover, as extension is only limited space, the unity 
and infinity of space lead directly to the doctrine of One infinite sub¬ 
stance, whose immanent action produces the world of phenomena ; — 
that is, to the pantheism of Spinoza, who takes away the necessity 
of a bridge by maintaining that thought and extension are both 




116 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


attributes of one Substance. We must begin, then, says Leibnitz, 
by reforming the Cartesian notion of Substance. It is not true 
that all the attributes of matter can be derived from motion and 
extension. The latter, indeterminate in itself, receives figure or 
shape only from motion ; and space itself, being immovable, can¬ 
not be the principle of motion. There must be something, apart 
from mere extension, which can be moved, and also which can 
have, either, in itself or ab extra, a cause or principle of motion. 
Besides extension, then, Substance must contain force — an active 
power — an indwelling cause, not susceptible of corruption or ex¬ 
haustion, but enduring forever, — a true vital force, with which God 
endowed it at creation. According to Leibnitz, the essence of 
corporeal substance is ever-during Force. Thus only can we ex¬ 
plain inertia, and many other phenomena of corporeal substance. 
To Descartes, the universe is a mere geometrical conception, and 
he reasons about it like a pure mathematician. Leibnitz regards 
it as a physicist, reducing it to a purely dynamical system. The 
Force with which he endows it is a power not only to move, but to 
think. In both cases, the Force may be concealed, but it always 
exists, as we see in the case of a taut cord stretched by a weight, 
or a bent bow; or even in the cases of impenetrability and gravity. 
It is not a Force which needs an impulse from without before it 
can come into activity; but its action is self-produced and continu¬ 
ous, a restless vital energy, which is never spent. Matter has 
always a tendency to motion, repulsion, or attraction, which will 
manifest itself when obstacles are withdrawn. In like manner, 
according to Leibnitz, it has a susceptibility, or rather an original 
stock, of sensations, perceptions, and appetitions , which exist, how¬ 
ever, only in a confused and latent state, and never rise to con¬ 
sciousness, except in advanced stages of corporeal existence. All 
the knowledge which the soul ever obtains was innate in it from 
the beginning; and education, as the etymological meaning of the 
word imports, is not putting information into the mind, but only 
drawing out its latent stores. This mental evolution is constantly 
going on ; the appetitions, as Leibnitz calls them, are the primitive 
desires and inclinations, which are the springs of our mental activity, 
keeping up the series of our intellectual states by constantly hur¬ 
rying the mind from one perception or thought to another. Many 
familiar facts evince the presence and the action of a multitude of 
these unconscious perceptions. Thus, when at some distance from 
the shore, we hear only one uniform murmur or roar from the 
dashing of the sea upon the rocks, but cannot distinguish the sound 


LEIBNITZ. 


117 


made by any one wave. Yet this general effect could not be pro¬ 
duced, if each particular wave did not contribute to it its own por¬ 
tion of sound. Thus, also, a forest at a distance appears only as 
an indistinct mass of green, to which each leaf, however, though 
separately invisible, must impart its own share of color. 

“ We may even say,” Leibnitz argues further, “ that it is through 
these minute latent perceptions, that the present is big with the 
future and loaded with the past; that all things conspire together 
— crvfxTrvoia irai ra ; and that in the smallest substances, eyes as 
piercing as those of God might read the whole series of events in 
the universe, — 

Qua; sint, quoa fuerint, quae mox ventura trahantur. 

These unconscious perceptions also mark and constitute the indi¬ 
viduality of each person, through the traces which they preserve 
of his former states as connected with his present being; and they 
might be observed by a superior intelligence, even when the man 
himself had no express remembrance of them.” 

The will of God needs not to be incessantly applied, as it were 
by a continual miracle, to produce all the movements of matter, 
and all the communication between soul and body, these two re¬ 
maining eternally inefficient and incapable of affecting each other. 
Such a theory degrades the Deity into an unskilful workman, who 
must be constantly remedying the deficiencies of his work, — push¬ 
ing the hands of his clock, in order to make it go and mark true 
time. This would be a mere deus ex machina, — a God of occa¬ 
sional interference, compelled to act on all emergencies, even the 
slightest. In the view of Leibnitz, ours is a mechanical universe, 
wound up, once for all, at the creation, and manifesting the per¬ 
fections of its author by never afterwards needing his intervention 
or aid, in order to do perfectly its destined work. This, according 
to him, does not contradict the doctrine of the eternal oversight 
and kind Providence of God; since all occasions were foreseen, 
and all emergencies provided for, in the plan of creation at the 
outset. What appears to us as supernatural intervention, — a 
revelation, for instance, or an answer lo prayer, the fall of Adam, 
and the subsequent redemption of the world by Jesus Christ, — 
were preordained and first constituted in the immutable counsels 
of God, when he called the universe into being. 

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, not 
merely in the state in which they first appeared, but in their whole 
subsequent history. But it will be objected, then, says Leibnitz, 


118 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


that “ our prayers and vows, our merits or demerits, onr good or 
bad actions, are of no avail, since nothing can be changed. This 
objection is most embarrassing to the vulgar, and yet it is a pure 
sophism. The prayers and vows which are now uttered, the good 
or bad actions which are done to-day, were already before God 
when he resolved to create this particular world. All that now 
happens was represented in the idea of the world, when as yet it 
was only a possible universe; every action appeared there as 
drawing upon itself its legitimate consequences of reward or pun¬ 
ishment, through the ordinary or special grace of God ; and all 
this is actually carried out in the world as it now exists.” 

This, indeed, is the distinctive feature of the philosophy of 
Leibnitz, that it completely harmonizes the mechanical with the 
teleological view of the universe. What is called the uniformity 
of physical law is never broken, yet every event conforms to the 
purposes of the moral government of God, as it was intended to 
do from the beginning. 

All created substances, according to Descartes, are passive ; all, 
according to Leibnitz, are active, and their activity even constitutes 
their essence. The proper designation of his philosophy is Dy¬ 
namism ; Matter is force, is activity, is actuality. That which 
does not act, he says, does not merit the name of substance. To 
affirm that God cannot extend or prolong his action beyond the 
present moment, so that the effect can be continued only by con¬ 
stant repetition of the cause, is to deny the efficacy of the Divine 
will, and even to misconceive the nature of force, which, once con¬ 
stituted, must be permanent. The Deity conferred upon his crea¬ 
tures from the first a certain measure of efficiency, which is the 
ultimate principle of all the various phenomena that they produce. 
The force with which they are endowed, as we have said, is not a 
simple potentiality, which would need excitement from abroad be¬ 
fore it could be brought into play; but it is a true entelechia, 
or active force, involving effort, and having in- itself all that is 
necessary in order to produce action. 

To get rid of the difficulty of explaining the reciprocal action of 
matter and mind, that stumbling-block of all systems of meta¬ 
physics, Monads are conceived to be a sort of intermediate existences 
between pure hard atoms, which, as elements of Matter, are in¬ 
capable of thought, and pure ideas, which, as products of thought, 
have no reality outside of the mind which conceives them. As a 
real existence manifested to sense, Matter is always a complex or 
a gg re g ate > consisting of many simple indivisible elements; other- 


LEIBNITZ. 


119 


wise, there would be a plurality or multitude not consisting of 
units, which is a contradiction. These units cannot be mere 
mathematical points ; for as such points have no magnitude, no 
multiplication of them, any more than of zeros, could make up a 
visible or tangible extension. Then the elements or primary con¬ 
stituents of matter, — in fact, of all existence, — are, not mathe¬ 
matical points, as the geometer would have it, not hard atoms, as 
the physicists would say, not molecules, according to the chemist, 
but Monads, infinite in number, because the doctrine of a 'plenum, 
makes them fill the universe. What we call a particular body is 
an aggregate of these Monads of a lower or higher order, and with 
or without a governing Monad, which gives more or less unity to 
such an aggregate. Is it a mere stone ? This is an aggregate of 
Monads of a very low order, manifesting no other force than what 
appears in cohesion, gravity, and impenetrability ; for though vir¬ 
tually possessing the force of sensation and thought, this is only 
latent, and never rises to consciousness. Is it a lump of iron ore ? 
Then, besides the forces just mentioned, it has malleability, ductil¬ 
ity, imperfect elasticity, magnetic force, etc. Go a little higher : 
is it a crystal ? Then, besides the above mentioned powers in each 
element, there is a governing Monad giving unity to the mass, 
through allowing its elements to come together only in one pecul¬ 
iar shape with definite sides and angles. Of course, since no one 
Monad ever really acts on another, it is said to govern the others 
only because all the parts act together harmoniously, as if they 
were directed by one central power. Is it a plant ? Then it has 
one governing Monad of a higher order, — what the botanist would 
call its specific vegetable life and character,— which vivifies and 
animates the whole organism, and determines its peculiar shape and 
functions. Go higher still: is it an animal ? Then, locomotive 
energy is added to the previously named forces, and sensations and 
perceptions, before latent, are developed and become manifest. Is 
it man himself? Then the governing Monad is the human soul, 
in which sensation and thought rise to full consciousness, — which 
has not only perception of outer things, but apperception of itself, 
and a cognition of moral law and responsibility. Further still: — 
the Law of Continuity, forbidding sharp transition anywhere, re¬ 
quires us to believe in an infinite series of still higher governing 
Monads, — spirits, angels, and archangels, a celestial hierarchy ris¬ 
ing up even to the throne of God himself. And of God, we 
must think reverently that he is the one governing and creating 
Monad of the universe, alone combining iu himself infinite power 
perfection, and goodness. 


V 


120 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

We can now understand whence Pope obtained his conception 
of a scale of existences, acting together in the best possible order, 
and thus constituting the universe which Infinite Wisdom and 
Goodness originated and governs. 

“ See through this air, this ocean, and this earth, 

All matter quick and bursting into birth. 

Above, how high progressive life may go! 

Around, how wide, — how deep extend below! 

Vast chain of being, which from God began, 

Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, 

Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 

' No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee, 

From thee to nothing. On superior powers 
Were we to press, inferior might on ours; 

Or in the full creation leave a void, 

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed. 

From nature's chain whatever link you strike, 

Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike." 

I quote Leibnitz’s own language, to show how precisely he an¬ 
ticipated the speculative theories which are now absorbing the 
attention of our botanists and zoologists. “All beings,” he says, 
“form but a single chain, in which the different species, like so 
many rings, so pass into and are fastened to each other, that it is 
impossible for the senses, or even for the imagination, to fix pre¬ 
cisely the point where any one begins or ends. All the classes 
which border on each other, or which occupy, so to speak, the 
points of divergence or alteration, must be equivocal, and have at¬ 
tributes which can be referred equally well to either of the two 
neighboring species. Thus the existence of Zoophytes, or Plant- 
animals, is nothing monstrous or unnatural, but is strictly conformed 
to the whole existing order of nature. And such, in my opinion, 
is the force of the Law of Continuity, that not only I should not 
be astonished to learn of the discovery of animate beings which, in 
many of their properties, — for example, those of nutrition and prop¬ 
agation, — might pass for vegetables just as well as for animals, 
but I am even convinced that there must be such, and that natural 
history will, at some future day, point them out to us.” A bolder 
prophecy, or one more exactly verified, after the lapse of more 
than a century, it would be difficult to find in all the annals of 
science. 

According to this theory, what we call death is the mere disso¬ 
lution or resolution of a corporate body into its elementary Monads, 
these last being essentially indestructible, and subsequently uniting 
themselves, with larger and more fully developed powers and ca¬ 
pacities, into new compounds, therein to pass through higher stages 


LEIBNITZ. 


121 


of existence. Thus, progress, as well as continuity, is a law of the 
universe. Thus the governing Monad of man, before it had risen 
to its present state of apperception or self-consciousness, had passed 
through a long series of connected stages of being. Originally 
formed “ of the dust of the ground,” it was one of the constituent 
Monads of mere inorganic substance, before God “ breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The 
history, given in the book of Genesis, of the order of creation, brief¬ 
ly indicates some of the intermediate conditions through which it 
passed, first in vegetable and then in animal life, but always rising 
in the scale. And after its separation from the present body, it will 
pass, with higher energies and aspirations, successively into other 
corporeal forms, carrying along with it dim memories and adumbra¬ 
tions— that is, ideas now innate — of what it had learned in previ¬ 
ous earthly homes. It will thus be enabled to play a higher part, to 
exercise a more stirring and ennobling influence, on the great thea¬ 
tre of humanity; and then, again, it is to mount to a higher stage, 
and as pure spirit, angel or archangel, to ascend gradually through 
the infinite scale which points towards, but never attains, the per¬ 
fections of the Almighty. Incessant activity, incessant thought, is 
a necessity of its being, from the lowest round even to the highest. 
The perceptions, the thoughts, are dim, vague, and unconscious, — 
are as if they were not, in the lower Monads; but they gradually 
eliminate obstructions, become clear, distinct, and adequate, and 
soar into celestial cognitions. In sleep, in swoons, in death, the 
succession of thought is never entirely broken, and may even be¬ 
come more crowded, more rapid and intense, as the outward scene 
shifts, and the connections with lower forms of existence are sev¬ 
ered. Memory is a sensitive plate, which never entirely loses an 
impression once made upon it; but though myriads of these be¬ 
come for a while too dim to be visible to consciousness, yet they 
are still there, ineffaceably engraved, the germs of our subsequent 
distinct cognitions. 

Leibnitz repudiates, however, the doctrine of metempsychosis or 
transmigration of souls. His theory, he says, is that of metamor¬ 
phosis and development, as exemplified in the transmutation of the 
grub into the butterfly. For as all bodies, he argues, are in a state 
of perpetual flux, like a river, particles continually entering and 
leaving them, so the soul changes its body only little by little, and 
is never deprived altogether of its embodiment; though by elimi¬ 
nation of its grosser parts, this may become so small as to be im¬ 
perceptible to sense, just as it was before birth. There are no 


122 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


bouIs wholly separated from a body. God alone is absolutely de¬ 
tached. What we call birth is but development and accretion from 
preexisting germs, and death is only involution into forms which 
have become exceedingly minute. As there was undoubtedly pre¬ 
formation in the germ even before conception, there was also an 
embodied soul lodged in it, and waiting to be evolved. In a word, 
the animal itself was there already, and by conception was only 
made ready to be transformed into a creature of a higher type. 

It is curious to find the Law of Continuity, to a considerable 
degree, anticipated, of all persons in the world, by homely John 
Locke, who writes: “ It is a hard matter to say where sensible and 
rational begin, and where insensible and irrational end; and who 
is there quick-sighted enough to determine precisely which is the 
lowest species of living things, and which is the first of those which 
have no life ? Things, as far as we can observe, lessen and augment 
as the quantity does in a regular cone, where, though there be a 
manifest odds betwixt the bigness of the diameters at a remote dis¬ 
tance, yet the difference between the upper and under, where they 
touch one another, is hardly discernible.” Those who are curious 
may be referred to the 519th number of “The Spectator,” where 
will be found a further citation from Locke, and the whole subject 
adorned and illustrated by the fine genius and earnest Christian 
faith of Addison. 

What Leibnitz and others confidently prophesied, though they 
had no lamp to guide their steps save their a priori anticipations 
of what must be the course of nature as evolved by an all-wise 
Providence, has been amply verified by the researches of modern 
science. “ One word,” says Mr. W. R. Grove, in his Address to 
the British Association in 1866, “one word will give you the key 
to what I am about to discourse on ; that word is continuity, no 
new word, and used in no new sense, but perhaps applied more 
generally than it has hitherto been.” “The more we investigate,” 
he says, “ the more we find that, in existing phenomena, graduation 
from the like to the seemingly unlike prevails, and in the changes 
which take place in time, gradual progress is, and apparently must 
be, the course of nature.” And he proceeds to apply this view to 
the recent progress of the more prominent branches of science,— to 
astronomy, geology, biology, the origin and nature of species, the 
history and social institutions of man, finding everywhere proofs 
that recently discovered intermediate links fill up or bridge over 
what once appeared to be breaks and chasms, thus satisfying us 
that “ continuity is a law of nature, the true expression of the ac¬ 
tion of Almighty Power.” 


LEIBNITZ. 


123 


Applying this Law of Continuity to animate nature, Leibnitz 
says: “ Every living organism is a sort of divine machine, or nat¬ 
ural automaton, infinitely superior to any engine of man’s device. 
For a machine made by human art is not a machine in each of its 
parts; a fragment of the tooth of a ratchet-wheel, for instance, has 
in it nothing artificial, nothing which indicates its relation to the 
purpose for which the whole machine was contrived. But nature’s 
machines, i. e. living organisms, are machines down even to their 
infinitesimal parts.” “Every portion of matter may be conceived 
as a garden full of plants and as a pool stocked with fish. More¬ 
over, every branch of such a plant, every part of one of these ani¬ 
mals, and every drop of the liquids circulating in its body, is again 
such a garden and such a pool.” “ Thus there is nothing crude, 
sterile, or dead in the universe, no chaos or confusion, though 
there may be what seems such; just as in a pool, if viewed from a 
little distance, one may see a confused movement and stir produced 
by the fish, though he cannot discern the fishes themselves.” u Thus 
it appears, not only that every living organism has a dominant 
Monad which is the soul of that animal, but also that each of its 
limbs and parts is full of other living things, plants and animals, 
every one of which, again, has its entelechia or dominant Monad.” 

When these doctrines were first published, nearly two hundred 
years ago, they must have been regarded as the wild speculations 
of a fanciful theorist; for the microscope was then in its infancy, 
and the science of histology had not yet come into being. But as 
now read, we find in them an astonishing anticipation of the latest 
discoveries and theories of the biologists of our Own day. The 
“ cell-gemmules ” of Mr. Charles Darwin, and the “ physiological 
units ” of Mr. Herbert Spencer, so minute as to be descried only 
by the eye of theory, for they are far beyond the highest powers 
of our improved microscopes, are only the modern representatives 
of the Leibnitzian Monads. They are now held up as the most 
advanced results of inductive science, or, if you will, as the supposed 
limits or goals, towards which the sciences depending on observation 
and analysis are tending and preparing the way. But to the eagle- 
eyed thought of Leibnitz, they were necessary deductions from the 
single axiom, first propounded by him as dominating the universe of 
existing things, the Principle of Sufficient Reason. 

“ Physiologists agree,” says Mr. Darwin, “ that the whole organ¬ 
ism consists of a multitude of elemental parts, which are to a great 
extent independent of each other. Each organ, says Claude Ber¬ 
nard, has its proper life, its autonomy; it can develop and repro- 


124 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


duce itself independently of the adjoining tissues. The great Ger¬ 
man authority, Virchow, asserts still more emphatically that each 
system, as the nervous or osseous system, or the blood, consists of 
an ‘ enormous mass of minute centres of action.Every ele¬ 

ment has its own special action, and even though it derive its 
stimulus to activity from other parts, yet alone effects the actual 
performance of its duties.’ ” Admitting, then, as the result of ob¬ 
servations made through the microscope, the cells or units of the 
body to be autonomous, “I go one step further,” continues Mr. 
Darwin, “ and assume that they throw off reproductive gemmules. 
Thus an animal does not, as a whole, generate its kind through the 
sole agency of the reproductive system, but each separate cell gen¬ 
erates its kind.” “ We cannot fathom the marvellous complexity of 
an organic being ; but on the hypothesis here advanced, this com¬ 
plexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at 
as a microcosm, a little universe, formed of a host of self-propa¬ 
gating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the 
stars in heaven.” 1 

At what precise point, then, do Leibnitz and Darwin begin to 
diverge from each other? Just here; that while the former main¬ 
tains that all the inherent energies and propensities — the internal 
machinery, so to speak — of each Monad were preformed in it by 
its Creator when the universe was first called into being, Mr. Dar¬ 
win says: “ According to my view, the germs or gemmules of each 
separate part were not originally preformed , but were continually 
produced at all ages during each generation, with some handed down 
from preceding generations.” 2 But why not originally preformed ? 
or through how many “ preceding generations ” have they been 
“ handed down ? ” Six, or six millions ? What valid scientific 
reason can be given for preferring either of these numbers to the 
other ? Having thus gone along with us a good way on the road 
pointed out by Leibnitz, which tends directly upward towards the 
throne of God, why do you suddenly strike off from it on a by¬ 
path which leads nowhere — to “ the Unknowable ?” You have 
virtually accepted the dictum of Mr. Martineau; “ surely nothing 
can be evolved which was not first involved;” or as Sir William 
Thomsen, one of the highest authorities in physical science, ex¬ 
presses it, “the assumption of atoms can explain no property of 
body winch has not previously been attributed to the atoms them- 

1 Darwin's I aviation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Am. ed., vol. ii.. 

pp. 441, 482, 483. ’ 

2 Ibid., p. 449. The italics axe mine. 



LEIBNITZ. 


125 


selves.” The cell-germs, though extremely minute, are still visible 
under high powers of the microscope. The distinctive properties 
and definite aims of each of these germs, you have admitted to be 
a fact needing explanation, and have framed this “provisional hy¬ 
pothesis ” of gemmules, which no mortal eye ever has seen, or can 
see, in order to account for them. Why not go one step farther, 
and account for the equally definite character and tendencies of 
each gemmule? Either the “gemmules” are veritable Leibnitzian 
Monads, or are marvellously near approximations to them. If the 
“ Pangenesis ” of Mr. Darwin, or the “ physiological unit ” of Mr. 
Spencer, is a legitimate scientific hypothesis, so also is the Monad- 
ology of their great predecessor. 

Catholicity of doctrine and a broad range of view are striking 
features of the philosophy of Leibnitz, rendering it a fit expression 
of the bold and comprehensive genius of the man. His chief pur¬ 
pose was to bridge over chasms formerly deemed to be impassable, 
and thereby to reconcile conflicting doctrines and systems. He 
filled the gap made by the Cartesians between matter and mind; 
he harmonized the mechanical theory of the universe, its govern¬ 
ment by universal and immutable laws, with the doctrine of a moral 
purpose and a special providence even in the minutest events; he 
reconciled Monism with Individualism, regarding them only as dif¬ 
ferent aspects of the same fact, the universe on either view fitly 
expressing the unity of its Creator and the immensity of his work. 
Science and theology, adopting the same principles, moved amicably 
in his system towards a common goal. In the “ New Essays on 
Human Understanding,” perhaps in too boastful a tone, Leibnitz 
thus characterizes his own philosophy. 

“This system appears to establish an alliance of Plato with 
Democritus, of Aristotle with Descartes, of the Scholastics with the 
moderns, of theology and morality with reason. It appears to take 
what is best from all sources, and then to advance farther than 
any one had gone before. I find in it an intelligible explanation 
of the union of the soul with the body, a result which I had before 
despaired of. I find the true principles of things in the units of 
substance, which this system brings into view, and in the harmony 
between them preestablished by the primitive substance. I find in 
it a simplicity and a surprising uniformity, so that it may be said 
to be always and everywhere the same thing, some degrees of ex¬ 
cellence excepted. I now see what Plato meant when he held 
Matter to be an imperfect and transitory being; what Aristotle 
meant by his entelechia; how even Democritus, according to Pliny, 


126 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


held out the promise of a future life ; how far the skeptics were 
right in declaiming against the senses; how animals, according to 
Descartes, are automata, and yet how they have souls and feeling, 
according to the opinion of the vulgar; how we can rationally ex¬ 
plain the doctrine of those, like Cardan, Campanella, Henry More, 
and others, who give life and perception to all things; how the laws 
of nature, many of which were unknown before this system pointed 
them out, derive their origin from higher principles than those of 
matter, although every change in matter takes place mechanically. 
Finally, it is only since I have meditated upon this system that I 
understand how it is, that the endowment of brute animals with 
souls does not impair our trust in the immortality of the soul of 
man, but rather confirms and strengthens it, by leading us to see 
that all souls are imperishable.” 




CHAPTER VIII. 


Realism, Nominalism, and Conceptualism. 

As a preparation for the study of Kant and the later German 
philosophy, it will be convenient to point out more fully than has 
yet been done the distinctive functions of the Understanding and 
the Sense. The Imagination, also, regarded as the faculty which 
mediates between the Understanding and the Sense, needs to be 
carefully considered, in order to determine its precise boundaries 
and the limitations of its use. Perhaps these ends can best be ob¬ 
tained indirectly, while we are reviewing at some length one of 
those old questions, the discussion of which so often recurs at dif¬ 
ferent epochs in the world’s history. 

One of the most remarkable controversies which have ever agi¬ 
tated the schools of speculative theology, and which also occupies a 
large place in the history of Philosophy, is that which was waged 
over the abstruse, and, as many would now consider it, the fantas¬ 
tical and absurd, question between the Realists, the Nominalists, 
and the Conceptualists. I do not agree with those who speak 
lightly of it, and regard it only as one curious chapter in the his¬ 
tory of the follies and aberrations of the human intellect. That 
cannot be a merely frivolous or meaningless dispute, which the 
mind of man inevitably stumbles upon at every stage of its in¬ 
quiries both in abstract speculation and physical science; which is 
debated in our own day with as keen an interest between Mill and 
Hamilton, between Agassiz and Darwin, as it was, over two thou¬ 
sand years ago, between the followers of Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, 
or in mediaeval times, between St. Bernard and Abelard, between 
Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas ; which agitated alike the uni¬ 
versities, the Church, and the politics of Europe ; which was 
waged not only with the pen and the bloodless weapons of diplo¬ 
macy, but with the club and the sword ; and which is now just as 
far from a final settlement as ever. 

In successive ages, it is true, the question has come up under 
different aspects, and theories have been formed in relation to it 


128 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


for widely dissimilar purposes. Yet at bottom it is always one and 
the same subject, the discussion of which must affect any theory 
that we may form respecting the nature of human knowledge. It 
may be stated in terms so technical and abstruse, that it shall seem 
to concern only the subtle and profitless distinctions of an obsolete 
Scholastic philosophy; or it may be so phrased that every botanist 
and zoologist, and even every chemist, of the present time, will 
recognize it as the topic toward which his thoughts are most fre¬ 
quently turned when he is occupied with the latest and farthest 
advanced researches and speculations of his favorite science. The 
limits of the present undertaking will allow only a hurried glance 
round the outskirts of the subject. 

What is it which is before the mind, — what is it towards which 
our attention is directed, and about which our thoughts are oc¬ 
cupied, —when we use General Terms; that is, when we are either 
speaking or thinking, not about this or that individual object or 
event, but about whole classes of things ? It is easy enough to 
tell what we are thinking about, if this be some one thing, having 
a definite and clearly perceived aspect to our senses, — as this 
man, that tree, the one triangle delineated on the blackboard. It 
is an idea or mental picture of this one thing, either as it is now 
presented to sense, or represented in the imagination. Both per¬ 
ception and imagination deal only with individuals, as presented or 
portrayed with the distinct attributes which belong to this one, and 
to no other ; since no two individuals perfectly resemble each other. 
A picture, whether on canvas or in the “ mind’s eye,” which is 
imagination, must be of this one (say) man or horse; — perhaps 
an imaginary one, Hercules or Bucephalus ; but still one and not 
many — an individual and not a class. Now, all the objects 
around us in nature, without exception, are individual objects, each 
having a character and attributes of its own; and at least two 
great powers of the mind, as I have said, perception and imagina¬ 
tion, are concerned solely with these particular things. But all 
the words of a language are General Terms, the names of classes, 
— genera and species. What are we thinking about, then, what 
is before the mind, when we use words ? 

Nothing but words, answers the Nominalist; — mere sounds, 
'which are conventional or arbitrary signs, and which have no 
meaning or significance, except as they suggest other words, or, 
when we wish to be more definite, as they call up in imagination a 
picture of some one individual belonging to the class of which that 
word is an arbitrary sign. 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 129 

Not so, eagerly responds the Realist; the word is a name for 
the archetype or pattern, after which the whole class of things 
which it denotes was formed; — for the Idea of that class, which 
was in the mind of God before he made the world, and which is 
therefore a part of the plan of creation. The word, moreover, 
signifies the essence of the class, or its inmost nature ; and indi¬ 
vidual objects belong each to its own class only through partici¬ 
pating in that common nature, or sharing that Idea. An individual 
— John or William — is “ man,” because he has the characteristic 
and essential attribute of man, — because he partakes of the human¬ 
ity which belongs to his whole class, which makes man to be man, 
and which, therefore, must have beeu in the mind of the Creator 
when he formed men as a class or genus entirely distinct from all 
other creatures which he has made. In like manner, “ virtue,” or 
“ holiness,” is neither a proper name of some one individual action, 
nor a mere abstract name, flatus vocis, articulate sound without 
sense; but it is common to the whole class of virtuous or holy 
actions, and is that by participating in which any act becomes holy. 
“ Virtue ” is not a mere name ; it is a reality. The distinction be¬ 
tween “ virtue ” and “ vice ” is not merely nominal, but real. 
When Scripture commands you to “ do justly, love mercy, and 
walk humbly with thy God,” it does not utter mere words, but en¬ 
joins something positive and real, something which God approved 
from all eternity, before any act was done whereby this command 
was executed. To deny this is to deny that there are any essential 
distinctions between different classes of actions and things ; to deny 
that genera and species are really constituted in the nature of 
things, or are anything more than fabrications for man’s conven¬ 
ience,— their names being applied, not indeed at random, but yet 
arbitrarily and by convention, through common consent, and so 
liable to be changed when greater convenience may require. Real¬ 
ism asserts that there was a plan of creation, and that there is a 
moral law and a natural law, according to which individual things 
and acts are divided into real classes, and set over against each 
other by inherent and essential distinctions, so that these are good 
and those evil, these are men and those brutes, this is life and 
that is death. With this view of the matter, I think we can un¬ 
derstand how Realism came to be a substantive and earnest belief, 
and men became fanatics in support of it, judging their opponents 
to be infidels and atheists. 

Then come the Conceptualists, and say to Nominalist and 
Realist, “ you are both wrong, and the truth, as usual, lies about 
9 


130 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


half way between the two extreme opinions.” Universals — abstract 
general ideas — are something more than mere words, and some¬ 
thing less than real substantive entities, having a distinct and in¬ 
dependent existence. They are—abstract general ideas. The 
question concerns the nature and powers of the human mind, and 
relates to the different, classes of ideas which are presented to it, or 
which it is able to form. Our cognitive faculties are not limited to 
the senses and the imagination ; if they were, then indeed our 
knowledge would be confined to particulars, and not only should 
we be incapable of rising to Universals — to General Ideas, but 
we should not even have names for such ideas. Words, which are 
general names, could never, have been invented, and we should 
be incapable of language, like the brutes. Besides the senses and 
the imagination, which take note only of particulars, and which 
dogs and cats possess equally well, sometimes better, than men, we 
have intellect — the Understanding proper — the faculty of pure 
Thought; and the special function of this faculty is to form gen¬ 
eral ideas. And the process of so doing can be easily and quickly 
analyzed. The office of the Understanding is to compare partic¬ 
ulars with each other, thereby to discern relations between them, 
and so to generalize, through becoming aware that one or more of 
such relations exist not only between the two particulars that were 
first compared, but are common to a crowd of others, to so many 
particulars, that, for convenience, we put them into a class by 
themselves. Then we give a name to that class, which is, of 
course, a general name, or word; and we think the general idea, 
or universal, denoted by that word, when we think the common 
relation which exists between all the members of that class, — 
namely, the relation of similarity in some of their attributes. The 
relations between things are not perceptible by sense, which takes 
cognizance of the things alone; neither can they be pictured by 
the imagination, for they have neither shape nor color; but they 
are discerned by the intellect. I know not how “ virtue ” looks. 
I cannot draw “ goodness ” on the blackboard. But what of that ? 
I know what these words mean. I have, not a picture, but a 
definite concept, of them in my mind, formed by grasping together 
their attributes, and apprehending the relations which they bear to 
certain individual acts. 

After this brief view of their leading characteristics, we are pre¬ 
pared to follow understandingly the conflict of the three theories 
in the history of Philosophy. Of course, there are modifications 
and subdivisions of each of these schools; there are moderate 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 


131 


Nominalists, and ultra Nominalists; and so of each of the other 
sects. Hobbes, Berkeley, Dugald Stewart, and John S. Mill are 
ultra Nominalists ; Sir W. Hamilton is a moderate one and a mod¬ 
erate Conceptualist; Plato and the orthodox Schoolmen are Real¬ 
ists ; Locke, Dr. Reid, and nearly all the German logicians and 
metaphysicians are Conceptualists. My own opinion is in favor of 
all three, as I hold that the Realist, the Nominalist, and the Con¬ 
ceptualist has each caught some shade or aspect of the truth, 
neither being wholly right or wholly wrong. 

Among the ancients, Plato and his followers held, that, although 
universal ideas are not copied from objects observed by the senses, 
yet they have an existence independent of the human mind, and 
are no more to be confounded with the Understanding which thinks 
them, than material things are to be confounded with the senses 
which perceive them. The individuals which make up a species 
or genus must have something in common, — some leading element 
or attribute on which all their other elements and attributes de¬ 
pend. And the mind is capable of discerning this common ele¬ 
ment, though it is unpicturable to imagination or sense, and thereby 
of reasoning about the whole class as easily as about one indi¬ 
vidual of that class. “The Idea of a thing,” says Plato, “is that 
which makes one of the many ; which, preserving the unity and 
integrity of its own nature, runs through and mixes with things 
infinite in number ; and yet, however multiform it may appear, is 
always the same.” He held that of every species of things there 
is an Idea which has existed from all eternity, and that this is the 
exemplar or model, according to which the individuals of the spe¬ 
cies were made. This theory is summed up by the Schoolmen in 
the phrase universalia ante rem. 

The Platonic Idea has its modern representative in what our 
naturalists call the Type of each species or class. Speaking of 
the cell of the hive-bee, Dr. Jeffries Wyman says, “ here, as is so 
often the case elsewhere in nature, the type-form is an ideal one, 
and with this real forms seldom or never exactly coincide.” And 
Dr. Whewell remarks still more explicitly; “ Natural groups are 
best described not by any definition which marks their boundaries, 
but by a type which marks their centre. The type of any natural 
group is an example which possesses in a marked degree all the 
leading characters of the class.” Then “ a natural group is steadily 
fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given in position, though 
not circumscribed; it is determined not by a boundary without, 
but by a central point within, — not by what it strictly excludes, 


132 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


but by what it eminently includes; by a Type, not by a Definition.” 
Coleridge tells us also, that Idea and Law are the same thing seen 
from opposite points. “ That which contemplated objectively, or 
as existing in the world without, we call a Law, the same contem¬ 
plated subjectively, or as existing only in the mind, is an Idea. 
Quod in natura naturata Lex, in natura naturante Idea dicitur” 

The doctrine of Aristotle and the Peripatetics generally was 
expressed in a similar manner, as that of universalia in re. They 
adopted the Aristotelic distinction between Material and Formal 
Cause, or, more generally, between Matter and Form; as, for in¬ 
stance, between the marble and the special shape which makes 
this marble to be a statue of Hercules, or a Dancing Faun. The 
Peripatetics held that every individual object consists of Matter 
and Form, the former being special or peculiar to it, the latter 
being common to it with its whole class. The Forms do not exist 
separately, but are, so to speak, immersed in Matter. Matter can 
exist without Form, as in chaos, before the Divine Architect fash¬ 
ioned the Cosmos or universe ; but as Form must be of some Mat¬ 
ter, Aristotle rejected the Platonic doctrine of preexistent Ideas. 
Still, these universal forms are not, as the Conceptualists taught, 
mere conceptions of the mind, formed through a comparison of par¬ 
ticulars. They are real, and the proper business of science is to 
discern and compare them, thus arriving at general truths, — a 
mere acquaintance with particular objects not meriting the name of 
science. 

With the Scholastics, the technical word Form always has an 
active sense. It means that which forms, and thereby acts ; and 
we find this meaning generally adopted _ also'in the “ Novum Or¬ 
ganon,” and throughout Lord Bacon’s other works. “ A Substan¬ 
tial Form” is the inherent and permanent principle of action which 
makes any one substance, or class of substances, such as water or 
iron, to be the particular substance which it is, or which imparts to 
it its distinctive and essential attributes as such. Assuming, as our 
modern physicists seem to do universally, the primitive atoms, which 
are the ultimate elements of all material things, to be identical with 
each other in nature and essence, these atoms represent the “ Mat¬ 
ter ” of the Peripatetics ; the Germans would call it Urstoff. Then 
a “ Substantial Form ” would be the force, or agency, which brings 
together a group of such atoms, and imparts to them the distinc¬ 
tive properties of carbon, iron, or hydrogen. 

The Nominalists, immediately on their appearance as a sect in 
the eleventh century, were involved in a charge of heresy. They 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 


133 


seemed to attack the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, arguing 
that, if the essence of the Godhead might be spoken of as one 
reality, the distinction of three Persons would be lost. They 
charged their opponents with Sabellianism. that is, with maintain¬ 
ing that the three are merely so many different aspects of the one. 
The Realists retorted by accusing them of Tritheism, — of making 
the unity merely nominal, by teaching that real oneness of sub¬ 
stance was incompatible with distinction of Persons. We need 
not enter here into the particulars of such a controversy. I have 
alluded to it only in order to explain how the discussion became so 
hot, and so prominent and absorbing. In these modern days, of 
course, the question is one of mere science, the answer to it inti¬ 
mately affecting our notions of the essential character of classifica¬ 
tion, the nature and uses of language, and our power of thought 
and capacity of really knowing anything more than individual ob¬ 
jects and events. * 

The Nominalists say there is nothing universal but names ; that 
we invent names for such groups or classes of things as we find it 
convenient to put together; that a talent for reasoning consists in 
a skilful use of language ; and hence, that Logic is entirely con¬ 
versant with language. Ratiocination, says Hobbes, is computa¬ 
tion ; it is the addition or subtraction of names. Hence the truth 
and falsity of general propositions belong to speech, and not to 
things. There is a standard of truth or falsehood for singular 
propositions about individual things; for I may say “ this bit of 
iron is soft,” when in fact it is hard; but there is no such standard 
for the universal proposition u All iron is hard,” as it is merely 
conventional — a matter of agreement among men — what things 
shall be called iron, or shall be put into the class to which that 
name is given. Classification and naming being arbitrary, there 
being many different systems of classification, and different lan¬ 
guages or sets of names, the truth or falsity of general proposi¬ 
tions is also arbitrary. 

Each of the three systems, Realism, Nominalism, and Concept¬ 
ualism, has already been said to contain some aspect or portion of 
the truth, neither being wholly right or wholly wrong. It may 
now be added, in respect to the doctrine just indicated, that Realism 
is right and Nominalism is wrong. Science is not mere naming; 
classification is not wholly arbitrary; truth is not mere truth of 
words. God created each thing after its own kind; that is, he 
created the kinds or classes,' marking them off from each other by 
essential and ineffaceable distinctions. Species and genera exist in 


134 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


nature, whether we are able to find them there or not. We are 
not able to decipher all of God’s plan of creation. We often make 
great mistakes in endeavoring to conform our systems of classifica¬ 
tion to nature’s systems. And even when this endeavor is most 
successful, we may be often puzzled to tell where the boundary is 
placed, where one species ends and another begins. Plant-animals, 
as Leibnitz calls them, — sponges, for instance, — may be plants or 
animals, we don’t know which. But the typical plant is radically, 
essentially, different from the typical animal, the difference between 
them being established by God and nature. In like manner, man 
is man, and not a brute, the two kinds being created distinct. Per¬ 
haps it is a mystical use of language to say, as the Realists did, 
that all the individuals in any one class share or participate in one 
common nature ; for what is numerically one and indivisible cannot 
be shared by many. But interpret such language with a reason¬ 
able allowance for metaphor, and it expresses fairly enough a great 
truth. On this point, I hold with Agassiz, and not with Darwin. 
And when we pass out of physics and natural history, this one 
aspect of truth, which Realism has seized, seems to me to be at 
once more evident and more vital. Justice, veracity, purity, benev¬ 
olence, are something more than mere names. Actions are not 
arbitrarily classified, when they are put under these heads or their 
opposites. Here, surely, God’s law and the law of our own con¬ 
sciences have created real and essential distinctions, which we can¬ 
not overlook. 

And yet there is a large share of truth in the doctrine of Nom¬ 
inalism. We often use words as substitutes for thoughts; such a 
mental process is frequent, legitimate, and highly useful. We rea¬ 
son, going through long processes of argumentation, by the use only 
of words or other mere symbols, or by means of one particular in¬ 
dividual of the class, which we consider as representative of the 
rest; and in considering this specimen, we confine our attention to 
those attributes which it has in common with the class, leaving out 
of view what is peculiar to it as an individual. In Geometry, we 
reason in the latter fashion, making the one triangle or circle drawn 
on paper or the blackboard, or in the mind’s eye, a representative 
of all possible circles and triangles. In Algebra, we employ the 
former process, and conduct very long and intricate trains of rea¬ 
soning by mere letters and other symbols, — strange hieroglyphics 
they are to the uninitiated eye, — and never once think of the 
meaning or interpretation of one of these symbols, till we reach the 
final formula that expresses the desired result. To repeat what I 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 


135 


have said elsewhere: Having once satisfied ourselves, by spreading 
out in thought all the attributes which are combined in any con¬ 
cept, — or, to be still more careful, by having once called up in 
imagination a picture of some one individual possessing all these 
attributes, and therefore contained in the class, — that the meaning 
of the word, which is the sign of that concept and the common 
name of that class, is within our power, we proceed to use that word 
symbolically, — that is, as a mere sign, and therefore with much 
more ease and rapidity than if it were necessary to stop, each time 
it recurs, and repeat the process of verifying its meaning. Hence, 
it may be said that the use of language gives us the power of think¬ 
ing in short-hand; words are stenographic thoughts. Moreover, 
this abbreviated expression of thought is a great help to the mem¬ 
ory. Having once ascertained by reflection the relation of various 
concepts to each other, — that is, having formed judgments and 
reasonings, and expressed them in propositions, — it is a far easier 
and shorter method to remember the few words which constitute 
such a proposition, than to recall successively each of the mental 
processes which are now embodied in it, and through which it was 
first obtained. Language is thus the great repository of thought, 
not only in books, but in our own minds. 

Having shown that there is at least some truth both in Realism 
and Nominalism, I now proceed to do as much for Conceptualism, 
the whole theory or system of which seems to me perfectly well- 
founded, the admissions already made in favor of the other two 
theories not being contradictory of it, but only additions to it, being 
needed to make up a full view of the whole subject. The principal, 
indeed the only, argument of the Nominalists against Conceptual¬ 
ism is the assumed impossibility of presenting an abstract general 
idea to the mind, because such an idea must possess contradictory 
attributes. There may be, they say, an individual concrete idea of 
particular men, as John, Thomas, or William; and of particular 
triangles, as of a right-angled one, enclosing three square inches, or 
three acres, or an isosceles one of some definite area. But they 
insist that there cannot be an abstract idea of “ Man ” in general, 
because such an idea must be, at once, of a tall and a short man, a 
black and a white man, fat and thin, clothed and naked. One idea 
cannot present all these contradictory attributes ; what we call such 
an idea can be only a mere word, man, or a particular image of 
John or William, taken as a specimen or representative of the whole 
class of men. They reason in the same way against the possibility 
of a general idea of triangle, or anything else. 


136 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Now, I have admitted that we cannot have imagination — i. e., 
form a definite picture in the mind’s eye — of man, ti'iangle, or the 
like; but I maintain that we can think or conceive it. First, can 
we ever think what we cannot imagine ? Yes, unquestionably. We 
can think a relation or ratio, though this conception is absolutely 
unimaginable — unpicturable. Take the simplest of all relations, 
similarity, and difference or contrariety. You certainly cannot 
imagine either, though you can imagine similar objects. But the 
similarity is not in either object taken separately, and therefore is 
not perceived by sense, but is apprehended by the mind as existing 
between the objects. Look at John separately ; you see no simi¬ 
larity. Look at William separately; again, you see no similarity. 
Now look at John and William together, as standing side by side; 
and you say, you now see the similarity of one to the other, in that 
they both have the common features of human beings. But I main¬ 
tain that you do not literally see this similarity, but only apprehend 
or conceive it in pure thought. For is it not evident, that you do 
not actually see any more in either one of them, now that they 
stand side by side, than you did a minute ago, when you saw each 
separately ? Surely, then, similarity, or any other relation between 
two or more objects, is not perceptible by the senses, but is appre¬ 
hended or conceived by an act of pure thought. “ Qualities,” says 
Adam Smith, “ are almost always the objects of our external senses; 
relations never are.” Moreover, what is not presentable to sense 
cannot be pictured by the imagination ; since the only function of 
the imagination is to reproduce impressions made on the senses. 
Hence, similarity as such, distinguished from similar objects, cannot 
be imagined, but can only be conceived, or thought. 

This argument is as old as Plato, from whose “ Theaetetus ” I 
borrow this illustration of it. If, he says, by the side of six dice 
we put four other dice, we say that the six are more, are half as 
large again, as the others; but if we put twelve by the side of 
them, then we say that the six are fewer, are only half of the others. 
But to the senses, the six dice have remained all the time unaltered 
and equal to themselves. Having been neither increased nor dimin¬ 
ished, how can they, from more, have become fewer, or,, from half 
as large again, have become only half as many, if the intellect, or 
pure thought, did not apprehend something in them which mere 
sense cannot perceive, nor imagination represent ? 

Again, still borrowing from Plato’s “ Theaetetus,” we say there 
are some matters which the mind apprehends through itself, and 
others which it perceives only through the bodily organs. We do 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 137 

not perceive white and black with the eyes, or shrill and grave with 
the ears, but we see the former through our eyes, and we hear the 
latter through our ears. All sensible perceptions must surely con¬ 
verge towards some one common centre, (call it mind, or soul, or 
what you please,) which perceives through them as its instruments. 
The various percepts of sight, hearing, touch, etc., have each its own 
special bodily organ or instrument, through which the mind receives 
them. But no one of them can be received through the organ ap¬ 
propriate to another; we cannot hear with our eyes, or see with 
our ears. Then, whatever we conceive or judge respecting any two 
of them , cannot be performed through the organ special to either. 
If we conceive any thing common both to sound and color, we can¬ 
not conceive it either through the auditory, or the visual, nerve. 
Now, there are judgments common to the two; namely, of their 
number, existence, likeness or unlikeness, degrees of beauty or de¬ 
formity, greater or less aptitude to give pleasure or pain, and count¬ 
less other relations. All these are cognizable by mind or thought, 
but are not perceptible through sense, or picturable through imagi¬ 
nation. 

In music, what is merely sensuous is the quality of the note, or 
the difference perceived by the ear when a note of the same pitch 
is-sounded on a violin, a flute, or a clarionet, and the pitch, accord¬ 
ing as it is acute or grave. But music, properly so called, con¬ 
sists not at all in this mere quality or pitch of the notes, but in the 
harmony and the melody, the apprehension of which is purely in¬ 
tellectual, since it is an apprehension of the relations between the 
notes, whether simultaneous, as in harmony, or successive, as in 
melody. Hence, music cannot be written or expressed to the eye, 
except by a system of purely arbitrary and conventional notation. 
Even the application of the epithets high and low, which is the 
basis of our present system of notation, is arbitrary; and there is 
some reason to believe that their use was reversed by the ancients, 
— that they called the acute sound low, and the grave one high. 
At any rate, music is not the mere perception of high and low, but 
the purely intellectual cognition of musical intervals, — that is, of 
the distance between two simultaneous notes, and of the melodious 
Jwrangement of successive notes. Sounds in themselves harsh and 
unpleasant may still give some pleasure, if thus skilfully arranged 
and combined. 

I now proceed to prove, that the relation or ratio, which is thus 
thought , is not a particular , but always a general idea, being al¬ 
ways common to an indefinite number of related objects or ideas. 


138 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


And here I am sorry to differ, not only from Dugald Stewart, 
John S. Mill, and all other Nominalists, but even from Sir W. 
Hamilton, who, very inconsistently, as it seems to me, with other 
portions of his philosophy, argues stoutly, in opposition to Dr. 
Thomas Brown, that the relation apprehended between any two 
objects or ideas is always a particular relation, special to that one 
case, and only similar, at most, to a relation apprehended in some 
other case. On the contrary, I hold, with Dr. Brown, that a re¬ 
lation is always apprehended as general, or common to an indefi¬ 
nite number, if not of actual, at least of conceivable or imaginable, 
cases. For instance, take the mathematical relation, which is 
called ratio. Consider the ratio of 2 to 4, of 6 to 12, of 9 to 18, 
etc.; we do not say or think that the ratio in the first of these 
cases is merely similar to that in the second; but we know it is 
the same ; the ratio is just £, neither more nor less, in all the cases 
cited, and in an indefinite number of others. Take the proportion, 
a : b : : c : d; here, we do not say the ratio of a to b is similar to 
that of c to d , but it is equal — it is the same ratio : the quanti¬ 
ties are different, the ratio is the same. Take next the relation of 
equality : there can be but one measure of absolute equality ; and 
that is general, or common to an infinite number of conceivable 
equations; if x = a, then 2 x = 2 a, x 2 = a 2 , and so on indefi¬ 
nitely. We say the like of identity; for the very idea of identity 
is one and the same. True, to recur to a former instance, there 
are many different degrees of similarity; yet no one of them is 
particular. Any one measure or degree of similarity, though ap¬ 
prehended as actual in but one case, may be conceived as common 
to an infinite number of imaginable cases. It seems to me, this 
argument amounts to a demonstration of the possibility of abstract 
general ideas. 

Individuals belong to, and are limited by, space and time; they 
cannot even be imagined out of some particular space and time. 
“ This man ” belongs here and now ; “ that man ” belongs there 
and then. You cannot even imagine any particular thing out of 
its own place and moment. Hence, space and time are properly 
regarded as principia individuationis — the elements, principles, 
and means of individualizing objects. But the Universal — Man, 
in general — is emancipated from any particular time and space ; 
he belongs nowhere in particular, and to no particular date. Euro¬ 
pean, Asiatic, African, American, is equally Man; the hero of the 
first, the third, the tenth, the present, century, is equally Man. 
And for this reason, even if for no other, relations and attributes, 


REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM. 


139 


taken abstractly, are general ideas, Concepts, Universals. The 
similarity or contrast of two things may be observed anywhere, 
and at any time. So, also, this particular shade of red, this defi¬ 
nite degree of hardness or softness. 

Apart from argument, however, I think the theory which we 
are now combating is evidently extravagant and incredible. The 
Nominalist would have us believe, that, in reading a book or in 
hearing a lecture, wherein no proper names are introduced, and 
such are plainly of very infrequent occurrence, the mind of the 
reader or hearer has nothing before it, from beginning to end, ex¬ 
cept mere words, — that is, imagination of a succession of sounds, 
or of combinations of letters as they appear to the eye ; except 
that, from time to time, we arrest this succession of mere symbols 
or signs, which, on his hypothesis, are symbols without archetypes, 
signs without anything signified, and call up in mind an imagina¬ 
tion of an individual, and consider this as a specimen or represen¬ 
tative of the whole class which the word denotes. For instance : in 
saying “ The proper study of mankind is man,” we think these 
words, “ The proper study of mankind is man,” neither more nor 
less; except that, when we wish to be very accurate, we call up 
an image of some one man in an attitude of deep thought or study 
of some particular crowd of men, which crowd, also, we consider 
for the moment as representing a much larger crowd, all men, 
humanity itself. Still farther, on this theory, we particularize the 
word “ proper ” by an image of some one man doing one thing 
which he ought to do, which is fit or becoming in him, by con¬ 
trasting this with an image of some other man doing what he ought 
not to do, and thus come to an accurate knowledge of what the 
word u proper ” signifies. Now the imagination can reproduce 
only definite combinations of lines, shapes, colors, smells, sounds, 
and tastes. Pray what combination of such elements, — what 
shape, color, sound, etc., does represent the meaning of the words 
ought , Jit, becoming , — or the metaphysical ideas of time, space, 
cause, substance, infinity, and the like ? Why, in making any in¬ 
dividual a specimen or representative of its class, we are obliged 
to think a relation — the relation, namely, of that one to its class ; 
and as I have shown, a relation is unimaginable, cannot be picto- 
rially represented, but can only be thought. And that relation is 
general; for all the individuals in the class bear the same relation 
to the concept or class-notion. Surely, the most extravagant of 
all philosophical theories is that doctrine, first taught on English 
ground by Hobbes, and since too much favored by J. S. Mill and 



MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


other Positivists and ultra Nominalists, that all our knowledge be¬ 
gins with particulars, and is derived from mere sensations, so that, 
to quote Hobbes’s own language, “there is no conception in a 
man’s mind, which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been be¬ 
gotten upon the organs of sense;” and “a man can have no 
thought representing anything not subject to sense-” We might 
quote against him his own pithy aphorism, — “ Words are wise 
men’s counters ; they do but reckon by them; but they are the 


money of fools.’ 


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CHAPTER IX. 


Berkeleyanism. 

Perhaps the only fruitful and important truth in Psychology 
which we may fairly claim to have been first discovered in these 
modern times, and, as universally accepted both by physicists and 
metaphysicians, to be now established beyond all doubt or question, 
is that contained in Bishop Berkeley’s “ New Theory of Vision,” 
first published in 1709, when its author was ouly twenty-five years 
old. The germs of it were certainly to be found in the metaphys¬ 
ical speculations of Malebranche, especially in the first book of the 
“ Search after Truth,” and in a brief paragraph of Locke’s “ Essay 
on Human Understanding.” But these were mere hints, the full 
bearing and significance of which were not even suspected by those 
who made them. Consequently, their priority of publication no 
more lessens the merit of Berkeley’s grand discovery, than the 
shrewd anticipations of the true theory of gravity by Kepler, 
Huyghens, and Hooke detract from'the glory of Newton in first 
tracing out that theory to its farthest consequences, and verifying 
it by mathematical proofs, in his immortal “ Principia.” When first 
published, Berkeley’s doctrine appeared so novel and improbable 
that it was regarded as a paradox,’ or a sort of philosophical ro¬ 
mance. But it is now formally taught even in elementary treatises 
on optics, and is adopted into every scientific creed; though few 
persons take the trouble to put the several portions of it together, 
so as to be able to contemplate its results in the aggregate, or as 
one whole. 

Yet the doctrine may be easily summed up in one short state¬ 
ment. Berkeley proved, that there is no resemblance whatever 
between the visible and the tangible qualities of material things; 
that colors are the only objects of sight, while the distances, fig¬ 
ures, and magnitudes of external objects are not seen, but only in¬ 
ferred, or estimated, from qualities which are really visible, — that 
is, from variations of color, and from a gradation of tints and of 
light and shade. Prior to experience, without the aid of the other 


142 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


senses, our eyes could not inform us that anything existed out of 
ourselves. We do not see the outward world. The visible land¬ 
scape exists only in imagination, being constructed or put together 
there by the intellect, out of materials furnished to the memory by 
the sense of touch, and by experience of resistance to muscular 
motion. The mind invests the colors and gradations of light and 
shade, which are all that are actually seen, with the various modi¬ 
fications of size, shape, and position, disposes them at appropriate 
distances, and literally 

“ gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name.” 

At no period of life do we gain, by one step, so great an accession 
of knowledge, as when, in infancy, we learn to see, — a process of 
education'just as necessary, as gradually acquired, and as clearly 
the result of experience, as that whereby we learn to walk. 

Perceptions by the other senses, also, are frequently altered and 
enlarged by the judgment and imagination ; though the process 
of thus enlarging them, through long habit, is made so quick and 
easy that we do not remember it. All the information is then 
attributed directly to the sense, though, in fact, it is a joint result, 
(1) of perception by sense, (2) of remembered experience, and (3) 
of reasoning. Thus, we speak of hearing a bell, the crying of a 
child, or the rattling of a cart in the street^ In truth, we hear 
only certain sounds, at first unmeaning, but which experience has 
now enabled us to recognize as proceeding from those causes. 
Without such experience, we certainly could not tell even the 
direction whence the sounds came ; for direction also is, not a 
direct perception, but an inference, based chiefly on the sound be¬ 
ing a little more distinct to one ear than the other. 

Returning to vision, it is plain that the utmv. st which we could 
expect to see of any object is its length and breadth. We must 
infer the thickness from slight differences of shading, or deepened 
tints. Hence, when this shading and tinting are skilfully imitated 
by an artist, we are deceived, and think that the visible object is a 
sphere, when in truth it is only a flat disc, or other plain surface. 
In such cases, we usually say that the eye deceives us. But it is 
not so; for the eye tells us only that there is a certain shading 
and tinting; and this is true. But the mind rashly judges that 
this variety of shade and tint is produced, as it usually is, by the 
sphericity or thickness of the object; whereas, in this case, it was 
produced by a skilful artist. 

In a similar way we can explain the phenomena of the stereo- 


BERKELEYANISM. 


143 


scope, which have led some superficial thinkers to believe that 
Berkeley’s theory is thereby disproved. On the contrary, it is 
thereby demonstrated. Because the two eyes in a man’s head are 
two or three inches apart, some persons seem to think that our 
vision is like the Irishman’s gun, which was so constructed, he 
said, that it would shoot round a corner. But they are wrong; 
for the vision of either eye can no more be deflected from a straight 
line than a bullet fired from a gun. But when a solid object is 
held quite near the face, the right eye sees a little more than its 
fellow does of the right 6ide of that object, and the left eye a little 
more of the left side; that is, the two eyes see two surface-sec¬ 
tions of the object, which do not exactly coincide, because seen from 
slightly different points of view. The mind, enlightened by knowl¬ 
edge previously gained from tactual experience, uses the slight dif¬ 
ference now explained as one means of distinguishing solid objects 
from flat surfaces; and whenever the object seen by the right eye 
differs a little from the same as seen by the left eye, it infers or 
judges that the object is solid. And usually this judgment is cor¬ 
rect. But the stereoscope is a means of deceiving it; for in this 
instrument, two pictures, both on flat surfaces , are presented, — the 
one a picture of what the right eye usually sees, and the other a 
corresponding picture for the left eye. These two flat pictures 
being both presented at once, and at the proper distance, the mind 
wrongly infers that they are only two presentations of one and the 
same solid. 

The general principle is, that what is called an illusion of sense, 
though it is really an illusion of the judgment, always arises when¬ 
ever one and the same effect may be produced on a sense-organ, 
such as the retina, by two totally different causes or combinations 
of circumstances, the one of which is of very frequent, and the 
other of very infrequent, occurrence. The mind, having no imme¬ 
diate means of determining which of these two causes is at work, 
since the sensation produced is precisely the same in both cases, 
always refers this sensation to the well-known cause,— that is, to 
the one which usually operates ; and therefore the judgment is mis¬ 
taken, or in other words, an illusion arises, as often as the phe¬ 
nomenon is produced by the second, or infrequently operating, 
circumstance. Thus, faintness of coloring and indistinctness of 
outline are ordinarily produced by the great distance of the object 
seen; but they may also be caused by a mist or fog; and when 
this is the case, we are deluded into an immense exaggeration of 
both the distance and the magnitude of the object. 


144 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


As thickness or solidity, then, is not directly seen, so neither is 
distance, nor magnitude. The distance of any object from the ob¬ 
server being a line directed endwise to his eye, it must make the 
same impression on the retina whether the line be longer or shorter. 
We infer the distance from the distinctness or faintness with which 
the colors are seeu, from the relative position of the object to other 
objects whose distances are already known, from the muscular sen¬ 
sations attendant on the axes of vision of the two eyes being in¬ 
clined to an angle with each other or kept sensibly parallel, and 
from other circumstances, all of which are mere signs, the distance 
of the object being the thing signified, or inferred from the pres¬ 
ence of the sign. In the case of near and familiar objects, as the 
estimate is frequently made, it is usually very accurate. But as 
the object is more remote, the judgment becomes uncertain; and 
great distances, such as those of the fixed stars, we do not even 
attempt to estimate. If, when travelling on an unfamiliar road by 
night, I see a light before me appearing only as a fixed luminous 
point, I cannot tell whether it is a few feet, or a few miles, dis¬ 
tant ; whether it be not even a star on the edge of the horizon. 

But if distances are not seen, so neither are magnitudes, since 
the visible magnitude evidently depends on the supposed distance. 
Since the real sphere of our vision is always equally large, or con¬ 
tains an equal number of visible points, every visible object, which 
covers from the eye any other visible object, must, to the eye alone, 
appear as large* as that other object. Thus, before experience got 
by locomotion, a man’s thumb, which, placed just before his eye, 
might hide a church, must equal that church in size; or his hand, 
which might cover up his sight of the firmament, must be as large 
as that firmament. But the mind, instructed by experience and 
science, projects off that firmament so far, that, as its magnitude 
must increase in proportion to the distance, or rather to the square 
of the distance, it swells in our conception to immensity. But 
immense as it is, we may still see the whole of it reflected in a 
teacup full of water; and then, though certainly bounded by the 
rim of that little cup, it still seems to us as large and as distant as 
ever. 

“If,” says Adam Smith, “you shut one eye, and hold imme¬ 
diately before the other a small circle of plain glass, not more than 
half an inch in diameter, you may see through that little circle the 
most extensive prospect, — green fields, and woods, and arms of the 
sea, and distant mountains. But the visible picture which repre¬ 
sents this vast prospect cannot be greater than the little circle 


BERKELEYANISM. 


145 


through which you see them. If you could conceive a fairy hand 
and a fairy pencil to come between your eye and the glass, that 
pencil could delineate upon that little glass the outlines and colors 
of all those fields, woods, and mountains, in the full and exact di¬ 
mensions in which your eye really sees them.” 

Common facts show the necessity of experience and judgment, 
before we can obtain correct notions by vision alone. Thus, we 
are not so much accustomed to see objects distant from us in a 
vertical line, as in a horizontal one. Hence, the same visible object, 
if placed directly below or above us, will not by any means suggest 
the same magnitude as when seen at an equal distance on a level 
with the eye. Look down from the interior of the cupola of St. 
Peter’s at Rome upon the floor of the church immediately below, 
a depth of some four hundred feet, and the men and women walk¬ 
ing about on that floor appear no larger than flies or ants. But 
look at the same persons from the doors at the lower end of the 
nave, also a distance of some four hundred feet, and then, the spec¬ 
tator and the objects being on the same level, the latter appear as 
large as life. 

It is often objected, however, that the image formed on the 
retina, at least, is directly seen ; and as this image has sensible 
magnitude, form, and a relative position of its parts perfectly cor¬ 
responding to its archetype, that we do in fact see magnitude, 
shape, and relative position. The answer is, we do not see even 
the image on the retina, since this would require another eye, be¬ 
hind the retina, with which to see the image ; and then a third 
eye, still farther back, to see the image on the retina of the second 
eye ; and so on to infinity. Moreover, the image is inverted, has 
its right and left sides transposed, and is double, being formed on 
the retina of either eye; whereas the object seen is upright, 
single, and without transposition of its sides. Again, that a visible 
image should be transmitted, in the darkness within the skull, 
through the optic nerve and the substance of the brain, to the 
presence-chamber of the mind, wherever that may be, is an un 
meaning and absurd supposition. 

And now, thickness or solidity, distance, magnitude, and posi 
tion being thus eliminated, because they are not seen, but only 
inferred and imagined, it is obvious that the visible world is al¬ 
ready reduced to very little. It seems to consist only of color, 
and this is seen only as if in contact with the eye, and not as 
spread out over a surface. But even this concession is too much ; 
strictly speaking, the colors seen do not belong to the external 
10 


146 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


world, but exist only in the mind. 'They are merely effects produced 
in us by some occult causes existing out of us. And these effects 
do not even resemble their causes, — any more than vibrations of 
the air, or of the tj^mpanum of the ear, resemble the sensation of 
sound; any more than the pleasant feeling of warmth resembles 
that molecular motion or agitation, which chemists term heat or 
caloric; any more than the pain which follows the prick of a pin 
resembles the pin or the puncture which produces it; or to take a 
case more directly in point, any more than the flash of light seen 
resembles the heavy blow, on the back of the head which caused 
it to be seen. Sensations, feelings, pains, pleasures, exist only in 
a sentient mind, and depend, for their nature and degree, exclu¬ 
sively on the constitution of the nervous organism within which 
that mind is lodged, the various parts of that organism being 
roused each to its own peculiar activity by contact with external 
stimuli. Aristotle first observed, what modern physiology has 
amply confirmed, that all the senses are only modifications of the 
sense of touch. Let anything touch, and so agitate, the olfactory 
nerve, and the sensation of smell follows ; touch the palate, and 
we have the sensation of taste ; touch almost any part of the body 
with ice, and we feel a chill. Just so, when the undulations of the 
ether reach the retina, we see light, either white or colored. But 
the sensation produced is never an image or resemblance of that 
which causes it. Sugar is not like sweetness, a chill is not like 
ice, a vibration or undulation is not like sound or color ; any more 
than nausea is like tartar emetic. All the “ secondary qualities ” 
of body, as they are called, such as sounds, tastes, smells, colors, 
and the many and various sensations of touch proper, or mere con¬ 
tact with the skin or mucous membrane, are purely subjective, — 
mere feelings or sensations in the mind; and as Berkeley re¬ 
marked, nothing in the world can be like a sensation or idea, 
except another sensation or idea. 

We may accept, then, as demonstrated, Berkeley’s conclusion in 
his own words; that, to a man born blind, and afterwards restored 
to sight, “ the sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the 
nearest, would all seem to be in his eye, or rather in his mind.” 
And I may add that the experiments of oculists in couching those 
born blind, made since Berkeley published his Theory, have amply 
verified this conclusion. 

This account of vision does not shake our confidence in the 
knowledge apparently obtained from sight. It merely traces this 
knowledge to its proper source, showing that it is not direct, but 


BERKELEY ANISM. 


147 


mediate or inferential. The process is not so mechanical as it 
seems. The eye alone cannot perform the work. The agency of 
mind must be added to the opening of the eyelids, before the 
scene enters. To recur to a former illustration, we are apt to 
think that the ideas acquired by looking at a page of print are re¬ 
ceived by sight : when, in truth, nothing is seen by the eye but 
many black strokes on white paper, not one of which has any 
natural affinity or resemblance to the sound or the idea which it 
represents. Now the outward visible world is a book, aud the first 
one in which the infant learns to spell. There is no more a nat¬ 
ural or necessary connection between visible and tangible ideas, 
between varieties of light, shade, and color, and the figures, dis¬ 
tances, and positions suggested by them, than there is between the 
written or spoken word “ man,” and the rational biped without 
feathers whom it designates. The particles or undulations im¬ 
pinging upon the retina of one opening his eyes for the first time 
are mere words in an unknown tongue. The mind, taught by ex¬ 
perience, projects them off, invests them with significance, makes 
them messengers and interpreters between the outward world and 
itself, and learns from them more in a moment than years could 
convey by the slow steps of the original process. If man had only 
the sense of touch, how long would he be applying his hands suc¬ 
cessively to every part, before he could form a notion of the front 
of a great cathedral, with all its minute tracery and multitude of 
details ? Yet in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the mind 
receives the sensations of various colors, infers the magnitudes, 
figures, positions, and distances signified by these sensations, and 
pictures to itself as external that complex whole, with every ‘‘jutty, 
frieze, buttress, and coigne of vantage.” And we need not wonder 
that these many inferences are made without our noticing or re¬ 
membering them, when we consider how quick is the action of 
mind if long habit has made the process easy and familiar. How 
rapidly, for instance, does the practised eye run over a printed 
page, many letters, and even words, not being actually perceived, 
but supplied by the judgment from the context. Remember that 
at least three acts of the mind are needed for every letter: first, 
that the letter itself must be recognized and distinguished from 
every other letter ; secondly, that the sound must be remembered 
of which it is a symbol; and thirdly, that the idea must be recalled 
which this sound represents. And after all, these separate ideas 
must be framed together into propositions, and the whole arranged 
and judged as one piece of reasoning, narrative, or description. 


148 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Yet the eye and mind together run oyer such a page, containing 
perhaps two thousand letters, in less than a minute. What wonder, 
then, that the contents of nature’s book, which we have been study¬ 
ing every hour since our birth, should be mastered with so much 
ease and quickness ? 

Berkeley was led to doubt the existence of matter by the same 
train of thought which is expressed in his theory of vision. If the 
visible world is a phantasm, and exists only in the mind, what bet¬ 
ter evidence of reality has the tangible world ? In truth, there is 
but one of the five senses, of which it can be alleged with any 
show of reason, that it bears testimony to the objective outward 
existence of material things. Sight, as we have now proved, pri¬ 
marily tells us nothing ; and the same may be said of hearing, 
smell, and taste ; for sounds, odors, and tastes also are mere sen¬ 
sations, or effects produced on the mind. We take cognizance of 
these effects; but of their causes, the only things which are sup¬ 
posed to exist externally, and which bear no resemblance to their 
effects, we know little or nothing; and it is vain even to inquire, till 
we can assign some reason why one nerve, when touched or agi¬ 
tated, gives us a sensation of color, and another, similarly affected, 
a sensation of smell, and a third, when shaken, gives sound. Why 
does an orange taste sweet, and a lemon sour ? Why does a drum 
sound hollow, and glass shrill ? We do not know. We can only 
say, that we are so constituted as to be thus affected; we cannot 
tell how that is constituted which so affects us. The nature of 
the effect produced depends vastly more on the constitution of the 
thing acted upon, than on that of the thing acting. Thus, wax 
melts in the fire, clay contracts and hardens, water evaporates, 
powder explodes. Here, one and the same agent, fire or heat, 
produces a great variety of effects, depending on the nature of the 
thing exposed to its influence. Then, what can such various ef¬ 
fects as sensations are, teach us as to the nature of the cause which 
produces them ? 

Strictly speaking, there is no sound in the outward universe, but 
only a vibration of the air or some other substance, which would 
never become audible, if there were not a hearing ear and a per¬ 
cipient mind to receive it. So, also, there is no smell in the mate¬ 
rial world, but only, as is supposed, particles of effluvia floating in 
the atmosphere, which, when they come in contact with the nose, 
excite in the mind the sensation of odor. The assertion may ap¬ 
pear strange, but a moment’s reflection will satisfy any one of its 
truth, that, if there were no mind in the universe to be affected by 


BERKELEYANISM. 


149 


it, the world of matter would be absolutely dead, silent, colorless, 
dark, inodorous, and tasteless. What sort of a material world is 
it, then, which you contend for ? 

Conceive or imagine, if you can, such a universe, thus stripped 
of all secondary qualities, and you will then have an idea of Mat¬ 
ter pure and simple, or as it is supposed to exist per se, in itself,' 
absolutely, independent of the action of mind, which invests it with 
supposititious and unreal qualities. What is Matter as thus con¬ 
ceived ? It is simply what the physicists call “ impenetrability ” 
within certain limits of extension ; that is, it is a certain length, 
breadth, and thickness, — say of this book, — which repels or pre¬ 
vents anything else from entering into its own limits. It is not 
merely the limited extension itself, together with the lines which 
form its limits or shape; for this alone is mere empty space, not 
filled or occupied with matter or anything else. But it is such 
limited extension made impenetrable, or so occupied that, unless 
pushed aside, or compelled to occupy another and equivalent por¬ 
tion of space, it resists the attempt of anything else, any other 
force or other matter, to enter into its own space. This resistance 
of impenetrability exists, or is known to exist, only at the surface ; 
for, as Schelling remarks, so far as we know, matter has no inte¬ 
rior, no inside. Cut it up as fine as you please, we still know 
only the surfaces either of the whole or of its fragments; for only 
at the surface is this force of resistance manifested. For aught we 
know, or ever can know, Matter is a mere hollow shell. And at 
the shell, at the surface, so far as we know, there is nothing but 
Force ; namely, the Force of resistance. 

But what is force ? We know of none except the force of 
mind, exerted as will, witnessed by consciousness, and directed by 
intelligence. With a mental and conscious force, I push against 
the table; and, action and reaction being equal, the table pushes 
back against me, with a force equivalent to my own, and so far as 
I know, perfectly similar to my own. This force of resistance is 
perfectly uniform in its action, always subject to physical law, — 
that is, orderly and regular in its manifestations; and such, surely, 
are the characteristics of conscious and intelligent force. What is 
this force, or rather, whose is it* except the will and power of the 
infinite mind, here brought directly in contact, at the point of 
sense, with the will and power of my finite mind ? These two 
forces are known with equal directness and immediacy, — not one 
after the other, or as an inference from that other; but both at 
once, and per se , or in themselves. In the consciousness of effort, 


150 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


I become aware of myself, the Ego, as putting forth power or ex¬ 
erting energy ; and, at the same moment, I become aware of some¬ 
thing not myself, a Non-Ego, exerting an equivalent amount of 
energy in the opposite direction. One of these forces, my own, is, 
as I know, mental and conscious ; what shadow of evidence is 
there that the other is not equally mental and conscious? Is it 
even reasonable to attribute this second force to the brute, inert, 
hard, senseless atoms, which are commonly supposed to exist, in 
some inconceivable manner, within that mere shell, which no man 
has ever penetrated, but which men choose to call Matter ? 

Analyze any body that you please, and you will find it to be 
nothing but various manifestations of force, one of which, the force 
of resistance with its several modifications, is cognized immediately 
or presentatively, and is therefore called a primary quality, or is 
supposed to exist whether your mind perceives it or not; while the 
others, the so-called secondary qualities, are only the supposed and 
occult causes of the known sensations, and are therefore only 
mediately known, being inferred from their effects, which are not 
even supposed to exist when no mind is present to experience 
them. What we call an apple, for instance, is only, 1st, when 
taken into your hands, a power, directly or immediately known, of 
preventing the fingers from closing into a small spherical portion 
of space; 2dly, an inferred or supposed power of raising in your 
mind the sensation of a rosy or russet color; (I say, this power, 
and the others which are to follow, are only supposed to exist in 
the apple ; for aught you know, this sensation may be excited in 
you by the Infinite Mind only on occasion of the apple being so 
presented, and not in consequence of such presentation); Sdly, pow¬ 
ers of exciting in your mind agreeable sensations of taste, smell, etc. 
If we admit the Principle of Causality, namely, that every sensa¬ 
tion and every other event must have a cause, as an authoritative 
and necessary law of belief, then we must also admit the existence, 
out of our minds, of the various powers or causes which produce 
the sensations called secondary qualities. But whether we admit 
the Principle of Causality or not, the existence out of our minds 
of a force of resistance is directly and certainly known, for it is an 
immediate datum of consciousness. • And this is enough to disprove 
the monstrous Egoistic Idealism, or Solipsismus, of Fichte, John S. 
Mill, and the Positivists, who, by denying both substance and 
cause, thereby deny the existence of any Non-Ego, and so, first, 
leave one percipient mind alone in the universe, and then, sec¬ 
ondly, proceed to resolve this one mind into a mere group or series 



I 


l 


BERKELEYANISM. 


151 


of sensations, so that the final result of their theory is Nihilism. 
Very unlike this is the spiritualist philosophy of Berkeley, who 
expressly asserts the existence of a Non-Ego, that is, of other hu¬ 
man minds and of the Infinite Mind, and only spiritualizes Matter 
by resolving it into a manifestation of Mind. I have merely to 
add, what is now the universal admission of the physicists them¬ 
selves, that, in Matter as such, or as it is commonly conceived, no 
power, no causative force whatever, ever has been, or ever can be, 
discovered. It is nothing but a group of phenomenal effects; it 
never acts, but is only acted upon. This is merely a statement of 
the well-kuqwn mechanical law of inertia, that Matter is incapable 
of changing its state. It is brute, dead, and passive. If incapable 
of changing even its own state, a fortiori it cannot change the 
state of anything else. 

Berkeley does not deny, but strongly affirms, the uniformity of 
nature and the universal reigu of law; that is, that like antecedent 
phenomena will always be followed by like effects. And therefore 
he acted just like other men. He did not walk into the fire, or 
over a precipice, though he believed that both the one and the 
other existed only in idea. But he also believed, that the idea of 
walking into the fire would inevitably be followed by the idea of 
burning; and that a fall from a precipice would certainly result in 
painful sensations or ideas of broken bones. Therefore, like a 
prudent man, he ran no risks which he could possibly avoid of 
having unpleasant ideas forced upon him. Hence the essential 
shallowness and impertinence of those who attempt to reason 
against idealism as Dr. Johnson did, who as Boswell tells us, 
struck “ his foot with mighty force against a large stone till he 
rebounded from it, saying, ‘ I refute it thus.’ ” Berkeley did not 
deny the idea of solidity, or the uniformity of the occasions on 
which it is manifested. 

“That what I see, hear, and feel doth exist,” says Berkeley, 
“ that is to say, is perceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of 
my own being.” But what are those things which I thus see, hear, 
and feel? They are sensible things; and sensible things cannot 
be like those which are insensible. Every thing which is in any 
way perceived by the senses is a real being on my principles; but 
not on yours. The Matter, which you contend for, is an unknown 
somewhat, without sensible qualities, but having a supposed occult 
power of raising ideas of those qualities in the mind of the be¬ 
holder. It is you who doubt, or rather positively deny, sensible 
existences; I affirm them, and affirm that their essence or reality 


152 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


consists in being perceived, — that is, in being sensible. Their 
esse is percipi. The world which is immediately present to my 
perceptive consciousness, and is therefore known to be as real as 
my own existence, is a bright and beautiful world, stained with all 
the colors of the rainbow, full of ringing sounds and sweet odors, 
exposed to perception as far as my range, or any body’s else range, 
of vision, hearing, and touch extends; manifested in the same 
manner, under perfectly similar aspects, to my mind, and to every 
other mind. And this world, confessedly, exists only in idea or 
sensation, and is but the objective aspect of the beholder’s own in¬ 
tellect. It is not, however, the creature of his imagination; it is 
not constructed by his will and fancy; it is not subject to his ca¬ 
price. But it is orderly and permanent, subject in all its parts to 
that unchangeable will of God which we call “ physical law.” But 
the world of Matter, which you contend for, is not perceptible to 
sense ; is not colored; is silent and cold ; has neither smell nor 
taste, whether pleasant or unpleasant; and is known, or supposed 
to be known, by me only in that infinitesimal portion of it, which 
is in immediate contact with my own body. It is even an incon¬ 
ceivable world; for I cannot so much as imagine what would be the 
outward aspect of Matter when thus stripped of all its sensible 
qualities. The existence of a material world, then, is, at best, only 
an inference from what we actually perceive, and an unfounded in¬ 
ference. It is certainly not perceptible by sense. 

The conclusion of the whole doctrine is, that Matter is nothing 
but Force; Force is nothing but Will; Will exists only as ac¬ 
companied and directed by Intelligence and witnessed by Con¬ 
sciousness ; and intelligent and conscious Will produces not only 
order, harmony, and law, but also infinite variety, diversity, and 
change. The purely mechanical result of mere brute, inert, and 
senseless Matter would be, not order, not variety, not life, but 
chaos, inaction, silence, and death. “ I have no notion,” Berkeley 
says, “ of any action distinct from volition, neither can I conceive 
volition to be anywhere but in a spirit; therefore, when I speak 

of an active being, I am obliged to mean a spirit.I assert 

as well as you, that since we are affected from without, we must 
allow powers to he without, in a being ^distinct from ourselves. So 
far we are agreed. But then we differ as to the kind of this pow¬ 
erful being. I will have it to be spirit, you matter, or I know not 
what (I may add too, you know not what) third nature. Thus I 
prove it to be spirit. From the effects I see produced, I conclude 
there are actions ; and because actions, volitions ; and because there 



BERKELEY ANISM. 


153 


are volitions, there must be a Will. Again, the things I perceive 
must have an existence, they or their archetypes, out of my mind; 
but being ideas, neither they nor their archetypes can exist other¬ 
wise than in an understanding. There is therefore an under¬ 
standing. But Will and Understanding constitute in the strictest 
sense a Mind or Spirit,” And this is precisely what Schopenhauer 
and Hartmann maintain, when they declare that Witte und Vorstel- 
lung constitute the essence of every phenomenon in nature, or 
that they are the principles of which the universe is the manifes¬ 
tation. 

No one can affirm more distinctly and emphatically than Berke¬ 
ley does the reality and permanence of all that we perceive as actu¬ 
ally existing, including, of course, the uniformity and immutability 
of what we now call Physical Law. He says, all this is present to 
the mind in idea ; and whatever is so present is, to him as well as 
to the vulgar, really existent and steadfast; nay, it is the very 
type of reality. In fact, the general result of his system is both 
to idealize Matter, and to realize Ideas. “ You mistake me,” he 
says; “ I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas 
into things ; since those immediate objects of perception, which, 
according to you, are only appearances of things, I take to be the 

real things themselves.Nor are they empty or incomplete, 

otherwise than upon your supposition, that Matter is an essential 

part of all corporeal things.It is your opinion, that the 

ideas we perceive by our senses are not real things, but images or 
copies of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is no farther real than 
as our ideas are the true representations of those originals. But 
as these supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is im¬ 
possible to know how far our ideas resemble them at all. We can¬ 
not, therefore, be sure we have any real knowledge.The 

result of all which is, that we are thrown into the most hopeless 
and abandoned skepticism. Now give me leave to ask you, first, 
whether your referring ideas to certain absolutely existing unper¬ 
ceived substances, as their originals, be not the source of all this 
skepticism ? Secondly, whether you are informed, either by sense 
or reason, of the existence of those unknown originals; and in case 
you are not, whether it be not absurd to suppose them ? ” 






CHAPTER X. 


Transition to Kant. — His Life and Character. — The 
Purpose of the “ Critique of Pure Reason.” 

Under the influence of Descartes, French philosophy in the 
seventeenth century had been eminently spiritualistic, and confirm¬ 
atory of the great truths of morality and religion. Even Spinoza, 
pantheist and infidel Jew as he was, must still be called a'pure- 
minded mystic, who partially spiritualized matter by reducing it to 
an abstraction and identifying it with Deity. But a reaction began, 
and had already made considerable progress, even before Voltaire 
had imported from England the physics of Newton and the philoso¬ 
phy of Locke, both perverted to suit his own purposes. Theolog¬ 
ical bigotry and persecution, under Madame de Maintenon and 
Louis XIV., provoked fierce opposition, first, against the Jesuits 
and the Church, both identified with the State, and soon afterwards, 
against the religious faith which some unhappy agencies had per¬ 
verted and dishonored. Despotic government, the corruption of 
morals in high places, and the oppression of the lower classes pro¬ 
duced their last and worst results when they stimulated all the 
literary ability of France, in order to wage its war against the 
clergy and the other constituted authorities of the State, to shake 
the belief of the people in all that it had formerly held sacred. 
The philosophy of the eighteenth century, in France and Germany, 
and indeed through most of Europe, openly avowed infidel opin¬ 
ions, and, under the name of free thought, preached the doctrines 
of empiricism, skepticism, and immorality. Descartes was forgot¬ 
ten; Pascal and Malebranche were contemptuously pushed aside 
as dreamy fanatics; the doctrines of Leibnitz, though still taught 
in a pedantic form by Wolff, were obscured and perverted by those 
who could not, or would not, understand them. Bayle and Voltaire 
became lords of the ascendant; and their wit and vivacity made 
more proselytes than their arguments. Even Rousseau, who still 
preached a sort of sentimental deism, though he attacked all the 
institutions of society, and violated every principle of morality in 


TRANSITION TO KANT. 


155 


his own conduct, was still shocked by the excesses of Diderot, 
D’Holbach, and others, who made the Encyclopaedia a battering 
ram against the altar and the throne. 

Bolingbroke and Hume in England, Condillac, Helvetius, and 
Condorcet in France, were the professed authorities in speculative 
philosophy at this epoch, which, by a strange metaphor, was called 
the period of Illuminationisrn, — in German, the Aufklarung or 
Clearing-up, — the breaking away from old prejudices and the in¬ 
troduction of the light of unbelief. In a similar spirit of self¬ 
esteem, it called itself the Age of Reason. Condillac taught that 
all our ideas are only transformed sensations, and the chief feature 
of his work is an elaborate attempt to derive all our intellectual 
faculties from the operations of the external senses. This doctrine, 
with some of its consequences, is expressed in very unequivocal 
terms by Diderot. “ In the last analysis,” he says, “ every idea is 
resolved into a representation or picture addressed to the senses; 
and since everything in our understanding has come to it through 
sensation, so everything from the understanding, which cannot re¬ 
attach itself to some sensible archetype, is chimerical and void of 
meaning. Hence, it is an important rule in philosophy, that every 
expression for which we cannot find an external and sensible object 
must be rejected as having no significance.” Condillac endeavors 
to demonstrate his theory, by supposing a statue or automaton, fash¬ 
ioned internally like a man, but devoid at first of any impressions 
or cognitions whatever. He conceives one sense after another to 
be gradually awakened in this wooden or stone image, and aims to 
show how it might successively obtain all the knowledge and feel¬ 
ings which human beings actually possess. In perfect consistency 
with other portions of his doctrine, he calls men perfected animals, 
and the other brutes imperfect men. Helvetius, in conformity with 
his principles of fatalism and selfishness as the only springs of 
human conduct, makes the whole distinction between man and 
brute to consist in the superiority of the former in physical organ¬ 
ization ; so that, to adopt his own illustration, if the human wrist 
had terminated in a hoof, instead of a hand, man would still have 
been wandering in the forests as a wild animal. 

These opinions, and the demoralization of society which they 
indicated and did much to enhance, produced their natural fruit in 
the excesses of the first French Revolution. It was meet that the 
Goddess of Reason, under the guise of a prostitute, should first be 
publicly worshipped during the Age of Terror, when the scaffold 
was daily streaming with the blood of the purest and noblest men 


156 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


and women in France. I do not dwell upon these doctrines here, 
for since they amount to a rejection of all Philosophy, they are 
indirectly considered and refuted throughout the writings of the 
eminent men whom we have had, or shall have, occasion to con¬ 
sider. I allude to them here, only because their j>romulgation de¬ 
termined some of the leading features of the metaphysics of Kant, 
and, through him, of German philosophy during the first half of 
the present century. Kant’s great work, the “ Critique of Pure 
Reason,” was an attempt to hold the balance even between the sys¬ 
tems of empiricism and irrational dogmatism ; — not so much to re¬ 
veal the truth or falsehood which either might contain, as to rebuke 
the pretensions of both, by showing the insufficiency of the founda¬ 
tions on which they appeared to rest, and the groundless character 
of the assumptions whence they proceeded. 

It is with diffidence and many misgivings that I undertake an 
analysis and exposition of the leading features of the philosophy 
of Kant. The difficulties of the task are great. It is hardly too 
much to say, that till within twenty years, not more than a dozen 
scholars, either in this country or in England, had fairly mastered 
the “ Critique of Pure Reason ” in all its parts, so as to be able to 
give an intelligible account and criticism of it in their own lan¬ 
guage, with such illustrations as should make the doctrine and the 
course of the argument plain to ordinary minds. A translation of 
it by Mr. Heywood was printed in 1838, and another and better 
one, by Mr. Meiklejohn, was published in 1855, in Bohn’s Library; 
but for those who have any knowledge of German, if I may judge 
from my own experience, even this translation is far less intelligible 
than the original. The difficulties of the subject do not spring 
merely from the demerits of the style, though, for a great thinker, 
Kant was certainly one of the worst writers of German prose that 
ever published a book; and that is saying a great deal. One of 
his ill-compacted sentences, which sometimes extends over more 
than a single printed page, is ludicrously compared by Mr. De 
Quincey to an old-fashioned English family coach, such as was iu 
use during the last century for transporting half a dozen persons 
a distance of one or two hundred miles. “ Pretty nearly upon 
the model of such an old family coach, did Kant pack and stuff one 
of his regular sentences. Every thing that could ever be needed 
*n the way of explanation, illustration, restraint, inference, by¬ 
clauses, or indirect comment, was to be crammed, according to this 
German philosopher’s taste, into the front pockets, side pockets, or 


TRANSITION TO KANT. 157 

rear pockets of the one original sentence. Hence it is, that a sen¬ 
tence will last in reading, whilst a man — 

‘ Might reap an acre of his neighbor’s com.’ ” 

But this, as I have hinted, was not the worst. Kant had a pas¬ 
sion for the use of technical terms and formulas of expression,— 
phrases uncouth and barbarous, such as would have made Quintilian 
stare and gasp, most of them having been, in the application which 
he makes of them, invented by himself. In the abstruse portions 
of his subject, instead of stopping to explain or illustrate his mean¬ 
ing, he repeats over and over again, always in these stereotyped 
formulas, what he has already said, till the wearied reader begins 
to skip, and then loses the train of thought altogether. The sub¬ 
ject of the work is one of vast compass and extreme intricacy, being 
no less than an attempt to analyze and map out, with great minute¬ 
ness, all the powers and processes of the human intellect, through 
which it works in the attainment of knowledge. His aim is to 
show what is original, and what acquired, in the mechanism and 
furniture of the mind; how far it can go in the pursuit of truth, 
and why no farther; what are its grounds of assurance in the va¬ 
lidity of its legitimate conclusions, and what are the illusions and 
fallacies with which it is inevitably beset, when it tries to push its 
researches beyond the unalterable limits of human thought. 

The conception was a bold one, and even if carried out in the 
happiest manner, and under the most favorable auspices, it could 
be mastered in all its details only by patient meditation and per¬ 
sistent effort. But it was not happily carried out. Kant had- a 
morbid predilection, not only for completeness, but for system and 
symmetry. In order to satisfy him, the whole inquiry must be 
conducted upon one principle, all the results must perfectly corre¬ 
spond with each other, no gaps must anywhere remain, every new 
fact observed or new truth discovered must find its appropriate 
place, and the entire work must thus constitute as perfect an organ¬ 
ism as the human body, in which, according to Kant’s own defini¬ 
tion, all the parts are mutually ends and means. Most of the 
errors and superfluities of his system, as Schopenhauer has ably 
pointed out, have arisen from this morbid passion for system and 
completeness. He cannot accept a hint, an illustration, or an an¬ 
alogy from the kindred science of pure Logic, without pushing the 
parallel to its extreme limit, so that the correspondence shall be 
as perfect as that which exists between any visible object and its 
reflection in a mirror. Hence his table of just twelve Categories 


158 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of Pure Thought, subdivided into the four classes of Quantity, 
Quality, Relation, and Modality, each comprising three sub-species, 
of which the first two unite in order to form the third ; — the 
whole scheme being a forced reproduction, or parallel, of the twelve 
possible forms of Pure Judgment. Hence, also, his three Ideas of 
Pure Reason, the Soul, the Universe, and God, not only corre¬ 
sponding with, but directly evolved from, the three forms of syllo¬ 
gism,— namely, the Categorical, the Hypothetical, and the Dis¬ 
junctive. 

In any other portion of the world, except in Germany, a meta¬ 
physical work thus conceived and executed would have fallen 
stillborn from the press. Even the labor-loving Germans were 
slow to penetrate its meaning and recognize its merits. Six yeais 
passed before it attained the honor of a second edition, the first 
having appeared in 1781. Yet Kant endeavored to facilitate the 
study of it by publishing, in 1783, his “ Prolegomena for every 
Future System of Metaphysics,” — a sort of brief compend, in a 
synthetical form, of the leading doctrines of his great work, and a 
fuller explication of its aim and purport. But he was ill-fitted to 
be his own commentator; and his system might have waited ten 
years longer for a general acknowledgment of its merits, had it 
not found at last two enthusiastic disciples, in Schiitz, the philolo¬ 
gist, who founded a journal in Jena, in 1785, for its explanation 
and defence; and in Reinhold, who, by a series of letters published 
in the “ German Mercury” in 1786, rescued it from neglect and 
furnished hints enough to render it intelligible. Then, indeed, the 
learned world in Germany awoke from its apathy. Lectures were 
delivered upon the new philosophy in all the universities. End¬ 
less discussions ensued upon the application of its principles to 
theology, ethics, science, and literature,— to the whole field of 
human thought. 

“This new philosophy,” said Staudlin, in 1794, “had an almost 
magical effect upon all the sciences, and found friends and disciples 
even among those who had never before devoted themselves to 
metaphysical studies. It awakened a spirit of philosophical in¬ 
quiry in Germany of which the age had not formerly been deemed 
capable ; and it contained so vast a treasure of new views and prin¬ 
ciples, that, as yet, but a small portion of them have been worked 
up; and only in a distant future can all the seeds of knowledge 
which it enfolds be fully developed.” In the same year, Fichte 
remarked, “ the Kantian philosophy is as yet only a grain of mus¬ 
tard seed; but it must soon become a tree which will overshadow 


TRANSITION TO KANT. 


159 


the human family. It will educate a new, nobler, and worthier 
race of men.” Schiller exclaimed, in 1805, “ the fundamental 
principles of the Critical Philosophy are a rich possession for ever, 
and on their account alone, one must deem himself happy that he 
has lived in this age.” “ More than any one before him,” wrote 
William von Humboldt, “ Kant has isolated philosophy in the 
depths of each man’s consciousness; yet no one has made so many 
and fruitful applications of it to the whole territory of knowledge.” 
“ Measured by one test of power,” says De Quincey, “ viz., by the 
number of books written directly for or against himself, to say 
nothing of those which he has indirectly modified, there is no phil¬ 
osophical writer whatever, if we except Aristotle, who can pretend 
to approach Kant in the extent of the influence which he has ex¬ 
ercised over the minds of men.” And in foreign countries, I may 
add, such as France, England, and the United States, this influence 
has immensely increased during the last twenty years, — that is, 
over half a century since Kant’s death. 

These expressions may seem extravagant; yet it seems hardly 
possible to overestimate the influence of Kantian metaphysics upon 
the teachings of the schools and the opinions of men. I know of 
no parallel to it, except in the dominion of Aristotle over the spec¬ 
ulations of all scholars and theologians throughout the Middle Ages, 
and indeed down to our own day. Tennemann re-wrote the whole 
history of philosophy from Kant’s point of view. The rationalistic 
tendency of theology during the last three quarters of a century, 
the predominance of the critical spirit in the examination of the 
Scriptures, is attributable almost solely to his influence. He is the 
father of what is called modern free thought in science and relig¬ 
ion ; he has unsettled even more dogmas than he has established. 
The new systems of philosophy in Germany and elsewhere, which 
have eclipsed his in the fashion of the hour, and in popularity, are 
still built upon his foundations. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, 
Schleiermacher, and Schopenhauer, though they pushed their specu¬ 
lations to consequences which Kant never dreamed of, and from 
which, had he known them, he would have recoiled with aversion 
and disgust, still so far adopt his principles and method, appeal to 
his conclusions, and use his phraseology, that they are hardly intel¬ 
ligible except to those who have previously mastered the “ Critique 
of Pure Reason.” Kant, indeed, holds the key to all modern thought 
in Germany; his system, to adopt one of his own technicalities, is 
the necessary propcedeutik , the indispensable preliminary informa¬ 
tion and discipline, for the acquisition of the later philosophy of 


160 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Germany, and even for a full understanding of the tendencies of 
thought in the philosophical schools throughout the world. 

Out of Germany, it is true, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of 
the subject, till within the last twenty years, Kant’s influence was 
but indirect, and his opinions were imperfectly known. It was 
common enough to have a smattering of the subject. Any one, 
who had a fair knowledge of German, could quote and criticize a 
few of the more prominent doctrines of the great Transcendentalist, 
taken out of connection with his system as a whole, and therefore 
generally misunderstood. Hence it was, that, misled by the term 
Transcendentalism; applied to his philosophy as a whole, and by 
his doctrine of the subjective character of space and time, the opin¬ 
ion became general, that his system was rather Platonic than Aris¬ 
totelian, placing the essence of things and the characteristics of true 
knowledge in the realm of pure ideas and super-sensual intuitions 
of the truth, — the very region, according to his philosophy, of 
necessary illusions and abortive attempts of the intellect to over¬ 
step its natural boundaries. Only within the limits of experience, 
he constantly teaches, only within the dream-world of space and 
time, is any legitimate application of the Categories, any proper 
use of our faculties, possible. Even Coleridge and De Quincey, 
once held to be great authorities Upon the subject, have been 
proved by Mr. Stirling to have mistaken, in this respect, the very 
elements of Kantian metaphysics. 

Recently, however, much real progress has been made. Willm, 
Remusat, and Michelet in France, Hamilton, Mansel, and Mahaffy 
in England, have supplied means for a fair knowledge and a crit¬ 
ical appreciation of Kant’s leading doctrines, even by those who 
are not able to study the subject in the original. Those who un¬ 
derstand German may be referred with confidence to the third 
volume, published in 1860, of Kuno Fischer’s “ History of Mod¬ 
ern Philosophy,” the whole of which is devoted to the “ Critique 
of Pure Reason.” Though somewhat diffuse and pedantic in man¬ 
ner, the writer has the very rare gift among German professors of 
philosophy of making himself perfectly intelligible, and of ade¬ 
quately translating the technicalities of metaphysics into the lan¬ 
guage of common life without loss of meaning or precision. An 
English translation of this volume by Mr. J. P. Mahaffy has been re¬ 
cently published in London, and is very well executed. 

Immanuel Kant was born of poor, but honest and pious, parents, 
in the Prussian city of Konigsberg, April 22, 1724. His father 
was a saddler, of Scotch descent, who hoped that this, his fourth 


LIFE AND CHARACTER OF KANT. 


161 


child, might become a clergyman, and with that view, placed him 
in the Frederick’s College at Konigsberg, under the care of Dr. 
Schulz, a Professor of Theology, and the spiritual adviser of, the 
boy’s mother. “ It was a strange fate,” exclaims Kuno Fischer, 
“ which caused the future leaders of the new philosophy to be com¬ 
mitted for their education to the very influences of which, in mature 
life, they became the most decided opponents. Descartes was trained 
by the Jesuits, Spinoza by the Rabbis, and Kant by the Pietists.” 
Rigorous principles of morality, and a stern sense of justice, were 
the only fruits which endured throughout life of Kant’s severe edu¬ 
cation in the schools’ of an austere theology. A gentle boy, feeble 
in body and bashful in manners, and an insatiable reader and 
thinker, he seemed marked out for a life of meditation and study. 
Yet he was not sickly either in mind or body; and his very regular 
habits, and strict temperance in food and drink, gave him a long 
life entirely free from disease. He worked his way through the 
schools and the University with little aid from his parents, giving 
his attention at first to the classics, and afterwards to mathematics 
and physical science, for which he retained a great predilection 
throughout life. A respectable linguist, he wrote Latin with ease 
and correctness, and acquired some knowledge of English and 
French literature. His writings show a wide range of information 
and excellent taste in the choice of authors, though he certainly 
had but little appreciation of the merits of style. To satisfy his 
parents, he attended the lectures of the theological faculty, though 
with little profit; for he disliked the profession, and hoped to secure 
some inferior academic office, which would supply his few wants 
and enable him to prosecute his studies. In this hope he was dis¬ 
appointed ; and soon after obtaining his degree, the death of his 
father having cut off his small resources at home, he was obliged 
to leave the University, and seek a meagre support for nine years 
as domestic tutor in private families. It seems that he always 
commanded the attachment and respect of his employers, though 
he confesses that he was but a poor teacher, his theory being much 
better than his practice. He had neither a commanding person, 
an attractive exterior, nor a fluent speech; and in spite of his long 
subsequent career as a Professor at the University, he seems never 
to have been very successful in imparting oral instruction. His 
pupils listened eagerly, for his fame was great; but if he lectured 
in no better style than he wrote, it is not probable that they car¬ 
ried away much with them. 

In 1755, having published and defended a small treatise on the 
ll 


162 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


principles of metaphysical cognition, he was admitted to exercise 
the modest function of a private lecturer, Privat-docent , in the 
University of Konigsberg. The gains of such an office are small 
and precarious, depending on the number of pupils who may offer 
themselves; and of these Kant had but few. He lectured on 
logic, metaphysics, physics, and mathematics; and at a later period, 
on morals, anthropology, and physical geography. This wide 
range was taken probably to show the variety of his attainments, 
and to enable him to become a candidate for any professorship, in 
which a vacancy might chance to occur. His probation was a long 
one; for fifteen years he held this very humble post, the gains of 
which, even with the strictest economy, hardly gave him bread 
enough to eat. During the last four of these years, however, he 
was sub-librarian of the Royal Library, with the modest income of 
fifty dollars a year. Small as the salary was, it afforded at least 
a safeguard against starvation. At last, in 1770, at the ripe age of 
forty-six, Kant was appointed ordinary Professor of Logic and 
Metaphysics, the very post for which he had been an unsuccessful 
candidate twelve years before. Eleven years afterwards, that is, in 
1781,he published his “ Critique of Pure Reason; ” and even then 
he had to wait six years longer, before the book and its author, then 
sixty-three years old, rose from obscurity, and he became by gen¬ 
eral consent the first metaphysician of his age. The concluding por¬ 
tions of his great work, the “ Critique of Practical Reason,” which 
contains his theory of ethics or moral science, and the “ Critique of 
Judgment,” which relates to the theory of taste and the idea of de¬ 
sign, were published, the first in 1788, and the second in 1790. 
Several works of less magnitude, all occupied with the develop¬ 
ment and application of the principles of his system, the most 
noteworthy being his “ Religion within the Limits of Mere Rea¬ 
son,” a very rationalistic view of theology, appeared at various 
times before 1797, when, the infirmities of age having come upon 
him, be ceased either to lecture or to publish. He was never 
married; when young, he was too poor ; and when at ease in his 
circumstances, he was too old and too fixed in his habits, to make 
such a change in his mode of life at all desirable. Though always 
healthy, during the last year or two of his life he became exceed¬ 
ingly feeble, and at last helpless and childish. Reduced to a mere 
skeleton, he dried up rather than died, on the 12th of February, 
1804, in the eightieth year of his age. 

Dislike of change, perfect self-dependence, and a rigid observ¬ 
ance of the moral law, were the leading traits of his character. 


THE PURPOSE OF THE “ CRITIQUE. 


163 


His habits were so methodical, and his persistency of purpose so 
great, that he might be called a slave to routine. Poor as he was 
during far the larger portion of his life, he never incurred a debt, 
or accepted a favor which he had not richly earned. Having se¬ 
cured, after waiting for many tedious years, the great object of his 
life, a professorship of metaphysics in the university of his native 
town, he rejected all offers of removal or advancement. Calls to 
Jena, to Erlangen, to Halle, he declined. He was never out of his 
native province, never so much as one hundred miles from the place 
where he was born. His longest journeys, and these were short 
and very infrequent, were to neighboring country-houses. Till 
he was sixty-six years old, the narrowness of his circumstances 
compelled him to live in lodgings, and to dine at a table d'hote. 
Then, having accumulated a modest independence by savings from 
income, he took a small private house, and every day entertained 
at dinner a few friends, never less than two, nor more than seven. 
Punctually at five o’clock in the morning, he was seated at his 
breakfast table, where he drank a single cup of tea, made a light 
repast, and smoked a pipe of tobacco, the only one which he al¬ 
lowed himself during the day. For fifteen years, he never failed to 
be in his lecture room at the appointed hour, never being so much 
as five minutes late. He lectured two or three hours each day, 
the rest of the forenoon being devoted to study or writing. At 
one precisely, he received his guests at dinner, all the arrangements 
at which were carried on like clockwork. The only subject to 
which he never voluntarily alluded in conversation, was his own 
system of philosophy. 

As the first step towards understanding Kant, we must try to 
ascertain what that system of philosophy or mode of philosophiz¬ 
ing is, which he stigmatizes as irrational dogmatism, and wherein 
it differs from the empiricism which inevitably leads to skepticism. 

Dogmatism is a method rather than a system, so that the doc¬ 
trines which are ranked under this head have little affinity with 
each other, except in the processes through which they are obtained, 
and in the reasonings by which they are supported. Descartes, 
Malebranche, Leibnitz, may all be termed dogmatists, because, in 
one manner or another, they seek to establish and confirm the con¬ 
clusions of experience and the earliest convictions of intelligence 
by abstract reasoning, and by an appeal to the necessary and prim¬ 
itive truths which underlie all our knowledge, and which cannot 
be denied, they say, without falling into self-contradiction and ab¬ 
surdity. Dogmatism affirms, and seeks, by the use of the deduc- 


164 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


tive method, to justify and demonstrate its affirmations. It affirms 
the being of a God, the existence and immortality of the soul, the 
reality of things out of our own minds, the freedom of the will, the 
certainty of human knowledge. It affirms that the intelligible 
world, of which Plato speaks, as seen by the light of pure ideas, 
may be clearly discerned by the enlightened and purified intellect, 
and that it may be regarded as the counterpart of the sensible 
world, the necessary relations of the former being the principles 
and ground of the observed facts of the latter. It assumes to 
penetrate beyond the world of phenomena to the world of realities, 
of things as they actually are, which lies behind. Man is capable, 
it maintains, of a spiritual discernment of the truth, and of purg¬ 
ing away the illusions of the senses, because the human partakes 
of the divine intellect, and is enlightened and informed by innate 
ideas, — reminiscences, as Plato would have it, of knowledge ob¬ 
tained in a higher state of being, — by primitive and absolute con¬ 
victions, which prove themselves, because they are the ground of 
all proof, and therefore cannot be doubted or denied, because that 
very doubt or denial takes them for granted. 

On the other hand, empiricism, as its name imports, affirms that 
all our knowledge comes from experience, and is therefore subject 
to all the imperfections and limitations of experience. It is strictly 
limited to phenomena, to what appears, never extending to the 
ground of the appearance, or to what really is. We obtain our 
experience only through the senses, either through the external 
senses, by which we observe what is passing in the world without, 
or the internal sense, otherwise called reflection or consciousness, 
by which we observe what is going on within our own minds. 
Let me here observe once for all, since the remark clears up 
much that is otherwise ambiguous and liable to be misunderstood 
in the Critical Philosophy, that whenever Kant speaks of Sinn- 
lichheit , the faculty of sense, he means both these sources of 
knowledge, — both the bodily senses, and what he calls “ the inter¬ 
nal sense,” though it is denominated by other writers “ conscious¬ 
ness,” and by John Locke, “ reflection.” I am conscious, says 
Kant, of an impression made on my mind, an impression which 
is given to me as a mental phenomenon, without any volition or 
agency of my own ; and this he calls a sensible impression, whether 
it comes through one of the external organs of sense, such as the 
eye or ear, or from the notice which the mind takes of its own 
states and phenomena, such as pain, joy, or hatred. The notice 
which the mind takes of such a sensible impression, whether it be 


THE PURPOSE OF THE “ CRITIQUE.' 


165 


a color or a sound, a pain or an anxiety, is an Intuition, and as 
such is strictly limited to what is here and now actually before the 
mind — in German, a Vorstellung, or placing before — a direct 
presentation of consciousness. 

Now, experience is made up of such intuitions, is their aggregate, 
and is therefore strictly limited to the phenomena of the present 
moment, to sensible impressions as they occur, and in the order in 
which they occur. We know nothing, the empiricists say, of the 
ground of these phenomena, of their efficient cause, or of any 
necessary connection existing between them. However frequent¬ 
ly one may have been repeated, we have no assurance that it will 
ever occur again. We know only that they come in succession, 
that as one departs, another rises. Of the source whence they 
come, or the cause which produces them, we know nothing, be¬ 
cause we have no intuition or experience of such a source or cause. 
Empiricism, then, it is evident, terminates in utter skepticism. 

The aim of Kant, as I have said, is to mediate between these 
two methods. He does not purpose to examine directly the doc¬ 
trines which are in dispute between the dogmatists and their op¬ 
ponents, so as to ascertain whether the evidence preponderates in 
favor of or against them. This was the method of former metaphy¬ 
sicians, and he repudiates it as uncertain and hazardous, — a mere 
groping in the dark, guided by no principle, and leading to no 
positive or unquestionable result. He complains that metaphysics, 
unlike logic and geometry, make no progress, but remain essen 
tially as they were three thousand years ago. The old questions 
perpetually recur; not one of them has been definitively settled. 
What one builds up, another pulls down ; and this process is con¬ 
tinually repeated. Giving up, therefore, at least for the present, 
any examination of the main points at issue, Kant goes farther 
back, and proposes to institute a critical examination of Pure 
Reason itself; — that is, of the mind as it exists a priori, as yet 
uninformed and uninfluenced by any experience whatsoever; — au 
examination of the cognitive processes, through which we know 
anything, in order to ascertain whether there be any a priori ele¬ 
ments in them, — that is, any elements which are not empirical, 
but transcend all experience ; to make a perfect list of these ele¬ 
ments, if any such there be, and then to determine their limits, 
the field within which alone they are applicable, and the grounds 
on which they must either be accepted as valid and trustworthy, or 
oe banished into the realm of shadows and illusions. Consequently, 
Kant declares that his work is not properly metaphysical, but 


166 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Critical, — a sort of preliminary examination of the ground, in 
order to determine whether such a science as Metaphysics is possi¬ 
ble. Instead of asking how the objects affect our cognitive facul¬ 
ties, he proposed to inquire how our cognitive faculties affect the 
objects which are presented to them. On account of the change 
of method thus effected, Kant compares himself to Copernicus, 
who, finding that he could not explain the motions of the heavenly 
bodies by supposing the firmament to turn round the spectator, 
tried the opposite hypothesis, by supposing the spectator to turn, 
and the stars to be at rest. From the centre of the mind itself, 
Kant observed the action of our cognitive faculties on surrounding 
things. He looked upon the outward world, and upon all objects 
of thought which are foreign to ourselves, as modified by our own 
mental constitution, — the mind projecting, so to speak, its own 
modes of being upon the external creation. “ It sounds strange at 
first,” he says, “ but it is none the less certain, that the mind does 
not derive its own primitive cognitions from nature, but imposes 
them upon nature.” 

Herein, as already remarked, Kant appears as the successor and 
rival of John Locke. The purpose of both is “ to inquire into the 
origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge;” and as a 
means to this end, to make a critical examination of the faculties 
of the human mind, and a careful analysis of its principal ideas 
and cognitions, in order to ascertain how far they are trustworthy. 
This purpose seems a legitimate and reasonable one, though it is 
open to the sarcastic objection brought against it by Hegel, who 
remarks, that an attempt to examine our mental faculties, before 
employing them in the search after truth, is as absurd as the deter¬ 
mination of old Scholasticus, never to go into the water till he had 
learned how to swim. Of course, this preliminary examination 
must begin by taking for granted the very thing which we wish to 
prove, namely, that our faculties are trustworthy,— that is, that they 
are competent to examine themselves. This objection is ingenious, 
and yet it is in great part sophistical. Through consciousness and 
memory, the mind somehow has the marvellous power of witness¬ 
ing its own operations, of seeing itself think, and thereby of judg¬ 
ing its own work as if it were the work of another being. All 
that Hegel fairly proves is, that the judgment so formed, if a favor¬ 
able one, is not necessarily infallible. Certainly it is not ; infalli¬ 
bility is the attribute only of omniscience. But limited and finite 
though it is, the human mind is abundantly capable of detecting 
inconsistencies and contradictions in its own work ; and as the 


THE PURPOSE OF THE “CRITIQUE .’ 1 


16T 


presence of these faults affords a presumption, which is well-nigh 
irresistible, that the work is wrong, so the absence of them fur¬ 
nishes at least prima facie evidence that the work is right. To 
this extent, at least, the undertaking of Locke and Kant is legiti¬ 
mate. For any greater measure of certitude, we must fall back, 
as Descartes did, on the veracity of God. When the skeptic en¬ 
deavors to impugn even this prima facie evidence of the truthful¬ 
ness of our faculties, which is all that Kant and Locke need to 
assume in the outset, he is himself guilty of the fallacy which was 
long ago pointed out by Thomas Aquinas: “ Etiam qui negat veri- 
tatem esse , concedit veritatem esse ; si enim veritas non est, non 
verum est non esse veritatem .” He who denies every assertion 
thereby denies his own denial, and so contradicts himself. We 
cannot make a true general remark, that all general remarks are 
false ; or, what is the same thing, that our faculties must be pre¬ 
sumed in the first place, and before examination, to be untruthful. 

Against the Empiricists, Kant proves abundantly, that a priori 
elements — Innate Ideas, if you choose to call them so—do enter 
into all our knowledge, even that of the simplest kind. We can¬ 
not blow any object whatever — not a bit of stone or metal, not 
the simplest geometrical figure — except by the aid of primitive 
and necessary ideas and principles, which never could be derived 
from sense, but which the mind supplies from its own stores. 
Without these, experience itself would not be possible. To the 
receptivity of the mind, — that is, to its power of receiving impres¬ 
sions and intuitions, in regard to which it is merely passive, — 
there must be added the spontaneity of mind, — that is, its power 
of reacting upon and modifying these impressions, of shaping 
them, perceiving their relations to each other, and binding them 
together into that whole which we call an object of experience. 

On the other hand, against the Dogmatists, Kant undertakes to 
demonstrate that these a priori elements and principles are appli¬ 
cable only within the field of experience, or if pushed beyond it, 
lead only to delusion and error. The receptivity of mind, without 
its spontaneity, is blind and useless, a mere heaping together of 
crude materials, which no more constitutes knowledge than a shape¬ 
less pile of bricks does a house. But then, spontaneity without 
receptivity is empty and void, mere Form without Matter, un¬ 
imaginable abstractions, from which no cognition can be derived. 
To adopt the Kantian phraseology, Concepts without Intuitions are 
empty ; Intuitions without Concepts are blind. Only the union of 
\he two makes experience possible. And even this union is merely 


168 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


subjective, a product of mental action, not corresponding to any 
reality, or thing in itself, irrespective of our cognition. Kant, it 
is true, calls this union “ objectively valid; ” but he means only 
“ valid for all possible experience whatsoever ; ” — valid not only 
for the present, but for past and future, experience; valid not only 
for my experience, but for yours and his, for that of all man¬ 
kind. It is called “ valid/’ because it is a necessary element of 
experience, for without it no experience would be possible. 

Previous systems differed from each other in the relative im¬ 
portance which they attached to the two cognitive faculties, — that 
is, to the faculty of Sense, by which we have Intuitions, aud to the 
Understanding or Intellect proper, by which we have Thoughts or 
Concepts. The Dogmatists say, these two differ only in degree, 
and that the first, the evidence of Sense, is incomplete, confused, 
and indistinct; while the second, the Understanding, clears up this 
confusion, removes this vagueness, and gives us full, clear, and 
certain knowledge. Thus, Descartes maintains, that the criterion 
of perfect knowledge or certainty is having clear and distinct ideas ; 
and Leibnitz affirms that an infinite number of confused perceptions 
of sense exist even in the lowest Monad, and rise successively to 
distinct and conscious knowledge only in the intellect of the higher 
orders of creation. Not so, say the Empiricists; it is true that 
the two differ only in degree, but as all our knowledge is derived 
from impressions on the Sense, it is most distinct, vivid, and cer¬ 
tain when nearest its source. The idea or conception, which re¬ 
mains after the sensuous impression has ceased, is only a faint and 
diluted copy of that impression. All ideas which cannot be re¬ 
ferred back to a sensuous origin are mere chimeras; and the im¬ 
mediate testimony of the senses is the only source of full and 
perfect conviction. All else is mere opinion or belief. The Skep¬ 
tic says, neither faculty is trustworthy ; both deceive. Our senses 
often give us false impressions, and the understanding is often mis¬ 
taken in the inferences which it draws from them. 

Among these divergent opinions, the Critical Philosophy takes 
intermediate ground. Kant says the two faculties differ in kind, 
each having its peculiar function to perform; and the action of 
the two must be united before any knowledge can result. This is 
only saying that the human mind not only passively receives sensa¬ 
tions from things, but apprehends relations between things; that 
the former are appreciable by the senses and picturable by the 
imagination; the latter are not. They can only be conceived; 
they result from comparison. My dog hears the successive aud 


THE PURPOSE OF THE “CRITIQUE.' 


169 


the simultaneous notes in a complex tune as well as I do, probably 
much better, since his hearing is more acute. But he certainly 
has no apprehension either of the harmony or the melody. A 
medley of inharmonious sounds will make him howl; and he will 
howl also at a grand orchestral movement by Haydn or Mozart, 
— probably with just as much appreciation of music in the one 
case as in the other. 

I borrow an eloquent statement of the same doctrine from Dr. 
J. H. Newman. “ One of the first acts of the human mind,” he 
says, “ is to take hold of and appropriate what meets the senses; 
and herein lies a chief distinction between man’s and a brute’s use 
of them. Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds ; but 
what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. 
The intellect of man, on the contrary, energizes, as well as his eye 
or ear, and perceives in sights and sounds something beyond them. 
It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and 
forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It dis¬ 
cerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful, and what 
is not. It gives them a meaning and invests them with an idea. 
It gathers up a succession of notes, as it were, into a point of time, 
and calls it a melody; it has a keen sensibility towards angles and 
curves, lights and shadows, tints and contours. It distinguishes 
between rule and exception, between accident and design. It as¬ 
signs phenomena to a general law, qualities to a subject, acts to a 
principle, and effects to a cause. In a word, it philosophizes; for 
I suppose Science and Philosophy, in their elementary idea, are 
nothing else than this habit of viewing , as it may be called, the ob¬ 
jects which sense conveys to the mind, of throwing them into sys¬ 
tem, and uniting and stamping them with one form.” 





CHAPTER XL 


Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason.” Transcendental 
-^Esthetic. 

What Kant calls an Analytical Judgment is only a definition, 
a mere explanation of the meaning of a word, and therefore adds 
nothing to our knowledge. When I say, “ a triangle has three 
angles, ” “ a quadrilateral has four sides,” the proposition is merely 
verbal and explicative; it tells what I mean by the use of certain 
words, but it expresses no new fact or truth. But when I say, 
“ Iron is hard,” “ sugar is soluble,” “ a stone, if left unsupported, falls 
to the ground,” the proposition teaches a new fact or truth ; it in¬ 
creases knowledge, and is therefore called a Synthetical Judgment. 
It is so called because it unites the attribute “ hardness ” or ** solu¬ 
bility,” expressed in the predicate, to the “ iron ” or “ sugar ” which 
forms the subject. All knowledge takes the form of a judgment; 
every fact or truth may be expressed by a proposition in which a 
predicate is united by the copula with a subject. Hence, all 
knowledge is a synthesis, a union, a putting together of two or more 
things ; and hence the phrase, “ synthetical judgment.” 

All the facts which we learn from experience are properly 
termed “ empirical Synthetical Judgments.” But when we assert, 
as we do with absolute certitude, that every change must have a 
cause, every sensible quality must inhere in a substance, Space is 
infinite and indestructible, etc., we go entirely beyond experience ; 
we assert what experience is utterly incompetent either to teach or 
to verify. Such assertions are denominated by Kant “ Synthetical 
Judgments a priori .” Hume directed his attention almost exclu¬ 
sively to one of these cases. He saw clearly enough that the idea 
of cause cannot be furnished by experience, and therefore,-natu¬ 
rally enough, asked what is its origin. Whence did we obtain it ? 
This is Hume’s problem. Make the question universal, state it in 
the broadest possible form, and we have the great problem which 
the Critical Philosophy undertakes to solve: “ How are Synthet¬ 
ical Judgments a priori possible ? ” The phraseology is a fair 


KANT’S “CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON.' 


171 


specimen of that jargon of technicalities in which Kant’s soul de 
lighted ; but its meaning here is obvious enough ; throwing aside 
mere Analytical Judgments, which are evidently of no account, how 
is it that, independently of experience, we are able to know any¬ 
thing with absolute certainty ? To the consideration of this ques¬ 
tion, the “ Critique of Pure Reason ” is exclusively devoted. 

We first seek for a criterion or test by which we may securely 
distinguish a priori knowledge from that which is founded on ex¬ 
perience. Kant finds such a test, already pointed out by Leibnitz, 
in the characteristics of universality and strict necessity, neither of 
which can be attached to any propositions of empirical origin. 
Human experience is never complete, never exhausts the possi¬ 
ble variety of cases ; its judgments, therefore, are never universally 
true or demonstratively certain; but, founded on an inductive pro¬ 
cess, they are valid so far as our observation has extended. The 
contrary is always possible and conceivable. Not so with all 
the propositions of mathematics, with some axioms in physics, and 
with many other truths, that are implied in all the forms of spec¬ 
ulative knowledge. These carry their own evidence along with 
them, no case being supposable where absolute and universal cer¬ 
tainty would fail to attend them. Therefore, they are not derived 
from experience, and the question recurs with regard to their ori¬ 
gin, Whence does the mind obtain them ? 

Kant defies the world to give any other answer to this query 
than his own ; that they are a priori forms of the mind itself, — 
the colored medium through which we look out upon the universe 
of cognizable things. The material world is deaf and dumb to 
such truths. The mind does not derive them from without, but 
from its own stores, and, by its own inborn energy, imposes them 
as necessary and immutable laws upon the outward universe. Our 
perceptive faculties have a peculiar organization, and therefore we 
know a priori , that the information received through the senses 
must conform to this organization, receiving certain changes from 
the passages through which it is transmitted. In what manner 
things as they really are would appear to beings of a different con¬ 
stitution and nature from ourselves, we cannot even conjecture. 
But we know how they must appear to us, and therefore, prior to 
experience, we can determine some particulars in relation to them 
with absolute certainty. To inquire into the actual constitution of 
things, — their real nature, as distinct from the appearances which 
they assume to us, — is a hopeless endeavor. It is seeking to 
know, without using the only means of knowledge. But it is a 


172 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


gross error, though a natural one, to consider our own modes of 
knowing as modes of being inherent in things as they really are ; 
to give objective validity to subjective laws. 

As Kant so frequently speaks of the synthesis , which is necessary 
in order to constitute knowledge, let me illustrate the necessity of 
it a little farther. 

An Intuition is a perception of some one impression now made 
upon the mind, which, as referred to its origin in the faculty of 
sense, is either an external impression of some quality in an out¬ 
ward object, as a blue color or a circular figure, or an internal im¬ 
pression of some affection of mind, as fear or aversion. An object 
is a bundle or fasciculus of these qualities or attributes ; Mr. Mill 
calls it “ a group of sensations ; ” Kant calls it a “ synthesis of in¬ 
tuitions.” Thus, a rosy color, a nearly spherical shape, a subacid 
taste, moderate hardness to the touch, etc., make up the object 
which we call an apple. Still farther: an object is an aggregate 
not only of qualities or attributes, but also of parts. The Intuitive 
faculty apprehends by units, only one at a time; and therefore 
takes in successively the smallest parts, the minima visibilia, of the 
outline,and the extent or magnitude, of every object; because every 
intuitive perception, says Kant, being contained absolutely in one 
moment, can be only of an absolute unit of extension and an ab¬ 
solute unit of time. Every object existing in space contains an 
indefinite number of such units of extension; every event taking 
place in time, be it of longer or shorter duration, contains a mul¬ 
tiplicity of such units of time. Thus, every object and every event 
is, to our apprehension, though not necessarily in itself, a mani¬ 
fold, a complex of many parts ; and can be apprehended as a 
whole, or as one thing, only by a synthesis of these parts. The 
function of Sense, of the Intuitive faculty, is to perceive or take 
in these units singly, and thus furnish us the Matter of knowledge ; 
the function of the Understanding, or thinking faculty, is to perform 
the synthesis of these parts, through thinking them in their proper 
relations to each other, thus enabling us to apprehend the object 
as one whole. 

We can now understand Kant’s oft repeated phrase, “grasping 
together the manifold of intuition in the unity of apprehension.” 
We also see how little single intuitions, mere perceptions of sense, 
can really teach us. True, they are the constituent elements, the 
Matter, of our knowledge ; but without the cooperation of the 
Understanding to put them together into wholes, through discern¬ 
ing their relations to each other, they no more constitute that 


KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 


173 


knowledge than a pile of bricks constitutes a house. Relations, as 
I have already abundantly proved, cannot be discerned by sense, 
nor represented by the imagination. Thus, an angle is a relation ; 
the direction of a line or a surface is a relation. I can see only 
the two lines and their point of junction; but I can only think 
their angular divergence ; for this is a general abstract idea, a 
Concept, not merely similar to, but precisely the same as, the same 
amount of angular divergence of any other two lines or surfaces. 
Sense perceives only the singular, the individual units, and cannot 
unite them; the Understanding thinks the general, the universal, 
and makes a synthesis of the units. 

Observe now the mental process by which, according to Kant, 
we form that object of thought which we believe to represent an 
external object, — say, a book. We will suppose the unit of ex¬ 
tension for the intuitive faculty to be an inch. In reality, it is 
much smaller; for a pin’s head is a manifold of intuition, just as 
much as a mountain; since we readily apprehend many differences 
in shape and other attributes between a pin’s head and a hemp-seed 
of about the same size. But an inch will do for an example. We 
perceive or intuit successively the six or eight inches that make up 
the length of the book ; and we apprehend also the relation of 
these successive inches to each other; namely, that they are con¬ 
tinuous, and all lie in the same direction, so as to form a straight 
line, being very different from a broken line or a curve. On 
coming to one of the corners, we notice that the two successive 
units, instead of being in the same direction, are at right angles 
with each other. Continuing this process, we put together the 
outline of the book; and by the same joint action of the Intuitive 
faculty and the Understanding, we cognize successively the thick¬ 
ness, the weight, the color, the texture, and other attributes, and 
thus fashion a manifold into the one object of knowledge, the whole 
which we call a book. Though these steps are really taken suc¬ 
cessively, each in its own moment of time, the whole is so quickly 
executed, that it appears to be done instantaneously ; for as Hobbes 
remarks, “ thought is quick.” But that time really elapses in the 
gradual comprehension of the object is proved when we try the 
process with some novel and interesting object, of irregular shape 
and remarkable attributes, such as a newly discovered flower, or 
mineral; for then a perceptible length of time and effort of at¬ 
tention are necessary in order to take it in and understand it. 
Compare also the faint and indistinct notion which we gain of a 
landscape that is new to us by a mere momentary glimpse of it 


174 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


through a window, with the full and correct knowledge which an 
artist has formed of it, when he has studied it long enough to re¬ 
produce it from memory on canvas. Motion, also, can be appre¬ 
hended only by a synthesis in time of the units of intuition. Any 
definite and limited space or time, though not filled up with sensa¬ 
tions, as a triangle, or an hour, considered abstractly, is a manifold 
so grasped together. Remember, also, that most of the qualities 
or attributes of the things around us, which we loosely speak of as 
perceived all at once by our senses, are in truth not perceived by 
sense at all, but only imagined or mentally reproduced from the 
recollection of former intuitions suggested by the few qualities that 
we really do have an intuition of at the moment. Thus I may 
have an intuitive perception only of the shape and color of the 
apple, and imagine, without actually perceiving, its weight, taste, 
smell, etc. 

It is not denied that there may be several simultaneous impres¬ 
sions on my different senses, or a very complex impression on any 
one of them. Thus, an intricate geometrical figure may be impressed 
all at once on the retina of the eye; and the palate, nostrils, hand, 
and eye may all be affected at the same moment by one external 
object. But the essence of the doctrine here maintained is, that 
these mere sensations, in themselves considered, without attendant 
and coordinate action of the understanding upon them, whether they 
come simultaneously or successively, convey no knowledge what¬ 
soever. They are as if made upon the senses of a brute animal, or 
upon our own senses when we are in a reverie or in deep thought, 
and so do not heed them, and are not even conscious of their occur¬ 
rence. Attention is indivisible, and must be added to mere Sensa¬ 
tion (Em.'pjindung) , before we can have Intuition, or a Vorstellung, 
which is a clear Presentation to consciousness. Consciousness, 
argues Kant, is the indispensable prerequisite for all cognition. 
“ If I am conscious of the Presentation, then it is clear ; ” that is, 
I can then distinguish it, through comparison, from some other 
Presentation ; “ if I am not conscious of it, it is obscure ; ” that is$ 
it is mere Sensation. Hence, every mental “ object,” which is per¬ 
ceived and clearly thought as one whole, is really a manifold of in¬ 
tuitions and relations, requiring time and effort for their cognition, 
and grasped together by an act of the understanding into a single 
concept. The minimum of intuition is actually an indivisible unit, 
the vanishing point alike of perception and thought. 

It is curious that Dugald Stewart, who argued stoutly against 
Kant’s philosophy, himself teaches, and illustrates with profusion 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC. 


175 


and elegance, this very doctrine of the indivisibility of attention, 
and of the time and successive efforts which are required to coguize 
any object that is larger than the minimum perceptible by sense. 
He thus taught genuine Kantianism without knowing it. “ If the 
perception of visible figure,” he argues, “ were an immediate con¬ 
sequence of the picture on the retina, we should have, at the first 
glance, as distinct an idea of a figure of a thousand sides, as of a 
triangle or a square. The truth is, when the figure is very simple, 
the process of mind is so rapid, that the perception seems to be in¬ 
stantaneous ; but when the sides are multiplied beyond a certain 
number, the interval of time necessary for these different acts of 
attention becomes perceptible.” Remember also what I have al¬ 
ready stated, that not only every sensible object, but every judg¬ 
ment and proposition, because it expresses a union, through the 
copula, of a subject with a predicate, made in consequence of a 
comparison by which we discern the relations between the two, is 
a synthesis, and every synthesis is a work of the understanding. 

I have dwelt thus long and minutely upon this portion of the 
doctrine of Kant, because it supplies a key to his whole system. 
The separate and peculiar functions of the Intuitive Faculty and the 
Understanding, and their necessary conjoint action, each under its 
own laws, in forming any cognition whatsoever, will be found to 
throw much light on the whole question respecting the origin, na¬ 
ture, and certainty of human knowledge. The Critical Philosophy 
uproots from the foundation the doctrine of the Sensualists, that all 
our ideas are derived from impressions on the Sense, and that the 
senses furnish the only criterion by which we can distinguish the 
true from the false, the real from the imaginary. The mere recep¬ 
tivity of mind may depend on the proper physical action of nerve 
and brain ; but what is thus received no more constitutes knowl¬ 
edge than a heap of letters of the alphabet, of printer’s types, 
taken at random, would spell out an algebraic treatise or an epic 
poem. The spontaneity of Thought, the coordinating power of the 
Understanding, must come in to arrange and unite these scattered 
elements of cognition, binding them into an orderly whole, before 
they can express even the simplest object of conscious perception. 
Matter without Form is unmeaning and chaotic; it is the dream¬ 
like mental state of a dog or cat. 

The doctrine that all our knowledge is not derived from sensa¬ 
tion will become still more firmly established, if we shall find that, 
among the elements or units which make up “ the manifold of in¬ 
tuition,” and thereby constitute the objects of knowledge, there are 


176 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


some, which, since they are universal and necessary, cannot be de* 
rived from our limited experience ; since this extends only to a few 
cases, and therefore cannot tell us what must be in all cases. These 
must have their origin in the mind itself, antecedently to all expe¬ 
rience, though first developed on occasion of such experience. Such 
elements there are; and far from being meagre in their nature or 
restricted in their application, whole sciences, of large import and 
priceless utility, are entirely founded upon them. To prove their 
existence, Kant first analyzes the intuitions of sense, in that portion 
of his “ Critique ” which he calls “ Transcendental ^Esthetic; ” that 
is, the determination of the necessary a priori elements of mere 
perception. 

The intuition of Space is not derived from objects through ex¬ 
perience, but must preexist in the mind before we could have any 
experience of an object. Thus, 1 do not first perceive a bot»k, and 
then derive from it an idea of the space which it occupies; for the 
book would not be a book, if it were not extended in length, breadth, 
and thickness; that is, if it did not occupy space. It is true, that 
I must perceive some external object before the idea of Space can 
be, so to speak, brought out in the mind, or developed into distinct 
consciousness. Just so, I must see something, before I can know 
what the power of vision is; but then it is certain that the power 
of vision must previously have existed, or I could not have seen 
anything. Objects could not have been perceived by me as exter¬ 
nal,— I could not have known what externality or outness was, 
if the idea of Space had not already been in my mind. 

Again: Space is necessary for the existence of objects; but 
objects are not necessary for the existence of Space. I can think 
away all objects, imagining them all to have been annihilated; but 
the space which they now occupy cannot be thought away; it will 
not be annihilated, even in imagination. Then it is a necessity of 
thought, and not a product of experience. I am pot in it, but it is 
in me. 

Thirdly, all objects are finite or limited; I cannot even conceive 
of them except as having limits and bounds. But Space is neces¬ 
sarily conceived by me as unlimited or infinite; I cannot imagine 
that there are bounds beyond which Space is not. Therefore, to 
derive Space from Body would be to suppose that the Finite in¬ 
cludes the Infinite, or that the part is greater than the whole. 

Moreover, Space is one, a single object, and all particular definite 
spaces are arbitrary and imaginary limitations of it, being carved 
out of it by our finite thought. Hence it is a Percept, and not a 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC. 


177 


Concept; it is an individual presentation to consciousness, and not 
a generalization from experience. To adopt Kaut’s language, Space 
is the form of the faculty of sense, or the subjective condition under 
which alone external perception is possible. 

The reasoning is very similar in the case of Time. The common 
explanation of the origin of our idea of Time is, that we obtain it 
by abstraction and generalization, from observing the duration, 
simultaneity, and succession of events. But Kant says the reverse 
is true; if we did not first have the idea of Time, we could not know 
what duration, simultaneity, and succession are ; since these are only 
modes, or modifications, of Time. Duration is the continuity, a 
quantum , more or less, of Time. Simultaneity is coexistence at the 
same Time. Succession is one event coming after another in Time. 
Evidently, then, if I had not already known what Time is, I could 
not have known what a quantum or measure of Time is, nor what 
coexistence or succession is. That is no definition which depends 
on the presence of the very word which ought to be defined. Time 
is the prius ; duration, simultaneity, or succession, is the posterius ; 
it cannot be derived from them, but they must be derived from it. 

Neither can Time in general, or in the abstract, be derived from 
our cognition of particular limited Times. Days, hours, and min¬ 
utes would have no significance to me, if I had not already a con¬ 
ception of Time, of which these are arbitrary divisions or measures. 
So the clock, or the place of the sun in the heavens, would not tell 
me what time of day it is, if my previously instructed mind did not 
give them an artificial significance, a meaning which is not their 
own ; for to my senses, directly, they show nothing but position and 
motion, or change. Again, Time in general is one infinite and un¬ 
divided whole, a continuity without break, a seamless garment ex¬ 
tending to eternity both before and after. Our division of it, our 
portioning it out into definite limited times, is an arbitrary and 
imaginary process. The slightest real division of it, the slightest 
separation of one part of it from its nearest part, is utterly incon¬ 
ceivable. Equally inconceivable is any limit or termination of Time. 
I can easily imagine the Mississippi dried up, Niagara frozen into 
silence, or the earth no longer turning on its axis ; but the river 
of Time flows on forever; not even in thought can I put a limit 
to its perpetual, its uniform, lapse. 

“ Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis sevum.” 

Surely, experience could not teach me these absolute and necessary 
truths; they are necessities of thought, not necessities of real ob- 
12 


178 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


jective existence. If they were the latter, the mind could never 
have obtained that firm grasp of them which it now possesses. 
Time, then, Kant concludes, is a priori in the mind; it is subjec¬ 
tive ; it is a form of the faculty of sense, of the internal sense; 
it is the colored glass through which we behold all events, these 
being manifested to us only as changes, as successive states, of our 
own minds. 

Now this doctrine, that Space and Time are only forms of human 
perception, not modes of real existence, is the most comprehensive 
and thorough-going system of skepticism that the wit of man has 
ever devised. The very constitution of our nature, a fundamental 
law of human belief, which compels us to assert their objective 
reality, their necessary existence independent of our thoughts, is 
held to be a proof that they do not exist except as necessary illu¬ 
sions of our minds. Then no other law <jf thought, not even that 
which unites the conclusion of a syllogism with its premises, is valid. 
The reasoning which impeaches one of the fundamental laws of 
belief, one of the necessary principles on which all reasoning is 
based, thereby vitiates and destroys all those laws and principles, 
and, in so doing, stultifies itself. In fact, the obvious result of the 
system is not so much Skepticism, as Nihilism; it does not doubt, 
it dogmatically denies; and by affirming such denial, it contradicts 
itself. It does not merely say, that the objective reality of Space 
and Time cannot be proved ; every one admits that But it affirms 
that such reality is impossible. This is not saying that existence 
as it appears to us is unreal, but that existence itself, under any 
form whatsoever, is inconceivable. For existence is continuity of 
being, or being related to some other being either in Space or Time ; 
and if these are unreal, no continuity, and no such relation, is pos¬ 
sible. Without Space, there is no coexistence, but the universe is 
contracted to a mathematical point, which is nowhere, and there¬ 
fore has no relation to anything beyond itself; without Time, there 
is no successive existence, but the past and the future shrink into 
the indivisible moment which alone is present; and even this dis¬ 
appears as soon as it begins to be. 

And yet Kant maintains the existence in some inconceivable 
manner of some inconceivable things, which he calls noumena, or 
things as they really are in themselves. There must be, he main¬ 
tains, a ground or reason for the phenomenal world, for the things 
which appear; something which determines phenomena to appear 
in their present forms, rather than in some other modes of apparent 
being. Why there must be such a ground or reason, or how the 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 


179 


affirmation of it is justified by any higher or stronger law of belief 
than that which guaranties the existence of Space and Time, he 
does not inform us. He takes for granted the celebrated principle 
of Leibnitz, that nothing exists, either in appearance or in reality, 
without a Sufficient Reason for its existence. I admit the validity 
of this Leibnitzian axiom; but on this ground only, that the very 
constitution of my nature compels me to admit it. And I argue 
that an imperative necessity of precisely the same character com¬ 
pels me to admit also the objective reality of Space and Time. If 
we deny one fundamental law of belief, we are bound in consistency 
to deny all such laws. One such principle cannot be saved from 
the wreck, in order to serve the purposes of a theorist. They must 
stand or fall together; for they all rest on essentially the same 
basis, a necessity of thought, and the suicidal consequences of re¬ 
jecting them. 

We can admit the positive portion of Kant’s theory, then, namely, 
the a priori cognition or intuition of Space and Time, without ac¬ 
cepting the skeptical doctrine which he has needlessly and unrea¬ 
sonably appended to it, — the doctrine, that is, that Space and Time 
in themselves are unreal and illusive. The a priori character of 
our knowledge of them is strikingly illustrated by the number of 
distinct original principles into which the idea of each of them may 
be explicated, — principles which are equally a priori and neces¬ 
sary with the primitive cognition in which they are all summed up, 
since it is impossible to doubt any one of them, or to derive it from 
mere experience. Schopenhauer has made out in tabular form a 
full list of these primitive axioms, which I here translate, as they 
show the curious parallelism and symmetry which exist between 
our notions of Space and Time. 


Time. 

1. There is but one Time, and all differ¬ 
ent times are parts of this one. 

2. Different times are not coexistent or 
simultaneous, but successive. 

3. Time cannot be thought away, but 
every thing in Time can be thought away, 
or imagined as non-existent. 

4. Time has three divisions, Past, Pres¬ 
ent, and Future; and these three form two 
directions (before and after), with one 
point of indifference, an indivisible Now t 
at their junction. In this respect, Time 
may be compared to a magnet, with its 
north and south poles, and point of indif¬ 
ference half way between them. 


Space. 

1. The same. 

2. Different spaces are not successive, 
but are coexistent or simultaneous. 

3. The same. 


4. Space has three dimensions, length, 
breadth, and thickness. 


180 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 


5. Time is infinitely divisible. 

6. Time is homogeneous and continuous; 
that is, no part of it can be separated from 
another part by anything which is not 
Time. 

7. Time has no beginning or end; but 
every beginning and end are in Time. 

8. By means of Time, we count. 

9. Rhythm (or proportion) is only in 
Time. 

10. We know the laws of Time a priori. 

11. Time can be intuited or perceived a 
•priori, but only under the image of a 
straight line produced to infinity. 

12. Time has no persistence, but no 
sooner exists than it vanishes. 

13. Time has no rest. 

] 4. Every thing in Time has duration. 

15. Time itself has no duration, but all 
duration is in it, and is the persistence of 
that which abides or continues, in contrast 
with Time's own restless lapse. 

16. Movement is possible only in Time. 

17. In equal spaces, swiftness is in in¬ 
verse proportion to the Time. 

18. Time is not directly measurable, but 
only indirectly, through motion; so we 
measure Time by the movement of the 
hands of the clock, or by the movement of 
the sun. 

19. Time is everywhere present. Every 
part of Time is everywhere, — i. e., is si¬ 
multaneously in every part of Space. 

20. In pure Time (i. e., in Time without 
Space), every thing would be successive. 
Therefore Thought, which belongs to Time, 
but not to Space, must always be succes¬ 
sive ; that is, one Thought must come be¬ 
fore or after another Thought. 

21. (Hence) Time makes the change of 
attributes possible; from being black and 
hard, for instance, a body can, in Time , 
become white and soft. 


22. Every part of Time contains all parts 
of Matter. 

23. Time is a principium individual 
tionis; i. e., two events , perfectly alike in 
every other respect, are still perfectly dis¬ 
tinguishable from each other, because one 
takes place at one time, and the other at 
another time. 

24. Now, the present moment, is with¬ 
out duration. 


5. The same. 

6. The same. 


7. Space has no limits or boundaries; 
but all limits are in Space. 

8. By means of Space, we measure. 

*9. Symmetry (or correspondence in con¬ 
trast, like the right and left hand) is only 
in Space. 

10. The same. 

11. Space can be immediately intuited 

a priori. 

12. Space can never pass away, but 
persists forever. 

13. Space has no motion. 

14. Every thing in Space has position. 

15. Space has no movement, but all 
movement is in it, and is the movable’s 
change of place, in contrast with the abso¬ 
lute immobility of Space. 

16. The same. 

17. In equal times, swiftness is in di¬ 
rect proportion to the Space. 

18. Space is directly measurable in it¬ 
self, and only indirectly measurable through 
motion. Thus, we speak of a given amount 
of space as a day's journey, or an hour's 
walk. 

19. Space is eternal; every part of it 
exists through all Time. 

♦ 

20. In pure Space, every thing would be 
simultaneous; for there would be no lime, 
in which anything could begin to be, or 
cease to be. 


21. Space makes the persistence or un- 
clmngeableness of substance possible. 
Thus, it is only as occupying Space, that 
we can conceive the substance of iron to 
remain unchanged, that from a solid it 
should become fluid, i. e., should be 
melted. 

22. No part of Space contains the same 
Matter with any other part of Space. 

23. Space is a principium individual 
tionis; i. e., two things , perfectly alike in 
every other respect, are still perfectly dis¬ 
tinguishable from each other, because they 
cannot occupy absolutely the same place 
at the same time. 

24. The mathematical point is without 
extension. 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC. 


181 


25. Time in itself is empty or void, 
being perfectly indeterminate. 

26. Every moment of Time is condi¬ 
tioned by the preceding moment, and is, 
only so far as this predecessor has ceased 
to be. 

27. Time makes Arithmetic possible. 

28. The indivisible (single) of Arithme¬ 
tic is the unit. 


25. The same. 

26. Every definitely bounded Space is 
by means of its Position, strictly determined 
throughout in reference to every other por¬ 
tion of Space. 

27. Space makes Geometry possible. 

28. The indivisible (single) of Geometry 
is the mathematical point. 


Now these fifty-sis truths relative to Time and Space, twenty- 
eight to each, are primitive, necessary, universal, and a priori. 
Certainly they are not based upon reasoning; for although they 
are now first stated as embodied in language, you recognize and 
admit them without hesitation, as first principles which you have 
always admitted and acted upon, and which need only to be enun¬ 
ciated in words in order to be brought into distinct consciousness. 
They are not new to you. Experience did not generate them, 
and is not necessary in order to prove them ; it has only furnished 
the light which enables you to read them as previously imprinted 
in ineffaceable characters on the secret tablets of your mind. They 
are innate ideas, principles constitutive of experience, and without 
which experience would not be possible. 

Time and Space, according to Kant, are “ empirically real ; ” 
that is, they have “ objective validity,” or validity in thought for 
all phenomena, for all that appears to us. They are universal and 
necessary conditions of all experience, not only of all present, 
but of all past and all future, experience, not only for my experi¬ 
ence, but for yours, for everybody’s, for the experience of all 
mankind. They are so, because they are subjective forms of the 
Intuitive faculty itself, and so are necessary conditions of all ex¬ 
perience, since without them, experience would not be possible. 
Hence, whatever we can affirm of the nature and relations of Space 
and Time, must hold true, also, of all phenomena ; since all phe¬ 
nomena exist only in Space and Time, and appear only through 
them. Space is the form of the external sense ; therefore nothing 
external can appear to us except as occupying space, or as mark¬ 
ing points and limits of space. Time is the form of the internal 
sense ; for whatever is presented in thought or consciousness is 
presented in its own definite time or moment, either before or 
after some other event. And because even external bodies and 
events can be known to me only through the mental acts by which 
I take cognizance of them, Time, which is a form of these mental 
acts, is a form also of the external phenomena which are known 
through them ; that is, Time is a form of all phenomena whatso- 


/ 


182 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ever, whether external or internal. Every object of sense or con¬ 
sciousness has its own time, at which it exists or is perceived ; and 
it cannot even be imagined out of Time. I cannot imagine events 
occurring or objects existing out of Time ; any more than I can 
imagine bodies existing out of Space. 

But while Time and Space are thus pare or a priori Intuitions, 
they are blanks, or mere Forms of Intuition. If sensation be not 
added, to fill up these blank Forms with some Matter, these Forms 
are mere nonentities, which can neither be perceived nor imagined. 
I can perceive objects in Space and events in Time ; but apart 
from these objects and events, I can perceive nothing. Sunlight 
is seen only as reflected from real objects. Pure blank space, 
which has no limits or shape, because it is infinite and is not made 
up of parts, because it is one and all-embracing, any division of it 
being wholly arbitrary, is mere nothingness. I can imagine geo¬ 
metrical figures and material objects in it, but I cannot imagine it 
apart from these figures and objects; for there is nothing in it, so 
to speak, for the mind to take hold of. Nonentis nulla sunt pred- 
icata ; that which has no distinguishing attributes, except nega¬ 
tive ones, is alike imperceptible and inconceivable. In like man¬ 
ner, pure blank Time, in which no event, no change, no mental 
action, takes place, is mere nothingness. To our apprehension, at 
least, it ceases to exist, and a thousand years are compressed into a 
single moment. We have a proof of this in perfect or dreamless 
sleep, during which we are unconscious of the lapse of time, the 
moment of falling asleep and that of awaking appearing to be im¬ 
mediately continuous. We are conscious of the succession of 
thought, but not of the Time in which that succession takes place; 
yet we necessarily perceive that Time is a condition of the suc¬ 
cession, for without it, the very word “ succession ” is meaningless. 
But while, in dreamless sleep, we cease to be conscious of the lapse 
of Time, we have an irresistible conviction that Time continued to 
elapse during that apparent interval. There cannot be a break or 
interval in the lapse of moments, but Time flows on in one uniform 
and unbroken course forever. 

But while Time and Space thus necessarily have empirical 
reality, since without them no experience would be possible, Kant 
5ays they are “ transcendentally ideal; ” that is, they have no reality 
out of or beyond experience. For the very reason, that they nec¬ 
essarily exist in the mind, being part of its texture and frame¬ 
work, they do not exist out of the mind. For the very reason 
that they are forms of intuition, when intuition is not, they are 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL 2ESTHETIC. 


183 


not. Their very essence consists in enveloping our perceptions; 
take away the perceptions, and you take away that also in which 
they are infolded, and which is really a part of them. In short, 
because they are forms of perception, which is ideal, they are not 
attributes of things as they are, dingen an sick, which are real. 
They are necessary elements of the world of phenomena, of all 
that appears ; but they do not affect noumena, or things which 
exist independently of our perceptions. 

This doctrine of Transcendental Idealism, as it is called, seems 
to me, as I have already said, the weak point in Kant’s meta¬ 
physics. He arbitrarily assumes that there is no correspondence 
between things as they really are, and things as they appear to us ; 
but his premises afford no ground for this assumption. The same 
incompetency of our faculties, which prevents us from asserting 
that things really are as they appear to us, equally forbids us to 
maintain that they are not as they appear. As Mr. Mansel re¬ 
marks, “ the utmost that his premises could warrant him in assert¬ 
ing is, that we cannot tell whether they are so or not.” Because I 
cannot search the room, I cannot tell whether the book is there or 
not. But this is a digression ; our present purpose is not to criti¬ 
cise, but to expound and illustrate, the system of Kant. 

The subjective character of Space and Time enables us to solve 
one portion of the fundamental problem of the Kantian philosophy. 
As a part of the question “ How are synthetical judgments a priori 
possible ? ” we may ask ourselves, “ How is the science of Pure 
Mathematics possible ? ” that is, how are we able, independently 
of and before any experience, to establish a vast aggregate of 
geometrical and arithmetical truths, — synthetic in character, that 
is, amplifying our real knowledge and not merely explicating it 
— and absolutely certain and universal; judgments which are nec¬ 
essarily true, not only for you and me, but for all mankind, — 
true not merely in this or that particular case, in which we have 
tested them by direct observation and experiment, but true for all 
possible and imaginable instances ? Kant’s answer is, because 
Mathematics is the science of pure Space and Time, and, as such, 
of the a priori Forms of the Intuitive faculty itself, through which 
all the perceptions of experience must pass before they can enter 
our minds, so that all experience must necessarily conform to them. 
All material objects must conform to the laws of Space, all numer¬ 
able and mensurable objects, whether material or mental, must con¬ 
form to the laws of Time; since Space and Time are innate and 
original forms of the very faculty through which alone we take 


184 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


cognizance of these objects; they are the mental atmosphere 
through which every possible Intuition must come to us, and there¬ 
fore the Intuition must be subject to the conditions of that at¬ 
mosphere through which it is transmitted. A priori , or before ex¬ 
perience, we are just as sure that every material object must 
occupy Space, that is, must have extension, as we are that every 
opaque object, if placed in the sun, must cast a shadow. If it did 
not, it would not be opaque. This, indeed, is a mere analytical judg¬ 
ment, since the word opaque means “ intercepting the light,” that is, 
casting a shadow. But its certainty is no greater than that of 
the judgments, unquestionably synthetical, and on which nearly 
all geometry is based, that two straight lines cannot inclose a 
space, hut that three straight lines can. 

In order to establish this Kantian doctrine, two points must be 
proved: 1. That Space and Time are pure intuitions, or forms of 
the perceptive faculty, instead of being abstract conceptions or 
forms of thought; in other words, they form the atmosphere which 
modifies all the presentations of Sense, and are not general or ab¬ 
stract ideas, formed merely by disregarding other attributes of 
things, and generalizing one attribute as found in many things. 
Each is an individual intuition, — one, and not many. This has 
been already proved. We may speak, indeed, of particular spaces 
or particular times; but these are only parts, or arbitrary limita¬ 
tions for convenience, of the one Infinite Space and the one Infi¬ 
nite Time, in neither of which is there any actual break or inter¬ 
val. These parts are not separable, but are contained in the one 
whole; whereas particular men — John, Thomas, and William, for 
instance — are separable from each other, and are not contained 
in, but are comprised under, the abstract conception “ man ” in 
general. Besides, as Kant remarks, “different times cannot be 
coexistent,” but must be successive, every one necessarily coming 
after, or preceding, another; hence, Time can be represented only 
&s a mathematical line, having but one dimension: whereas differ¬ 
ent men, different horses, different trees, may be coexistent, so that 
we can have a general idea, formed by abstraction, of each class. 
It is certain, therefore, that Space and Time are a priori Intuitions, 
and not Concepts, or abstract general ideas. 

To make what follows more intelligible, I must here explain one 
point in the Kantian phraseology. To construct a Concept or ab¬ 
stract general idea is to individualize it, by bringing before our 
mind an example of the objects denoted by that Concept. We 
thus, so to speak, make the Concept sensuous, by bringing an in- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC. 


185 


dividual case of it, through the imagination, before the senses. 
Thus the Concept, hexagon or parabola, is constructed, when I 
imagine how a particular hexagon or parabola would look if it 
were placed before my eyes. I construct aversion , when I imagine 
what my feeling would be if a hateful object were suddenly pre¬ 
sented. 

Secondly, if mathematical judgments are universally and neces¬ 
sarily true, only because they relate exclusively to Space and Time, 
and because Space and Time are a 'priori intuitions or forms of 
the perceptive faculty, not of the understanding, then mathematics 
must be an intuitive science ; that is, it must be based on individual 
perceptions, though cognized as universal, and known immediately 
and intuitively, that is, without any reasoning or argument, to be 
absolutely true and valid. As this statement conflicts with the 
ordinary theory respecting the nature of mathematical conclusions, 
it must be confirmed and illustrated at some length. Take the 
proposition on which all geometry rests, that a straight line is the 
shortest distance between two points; or, what is about the same 
thing, that one side of a triangle must be less than the sum of the 
other two. This is usually stated as an axiom, since it is found to 
be incapable of proof by reasoning, that is, by deduction from the 
very idea or definition of straightness, or from any previously es¬ 
tablished truth. Certainly it cannot be deduced from the definition 
of “ straight,” since this designates a quality of the line, while 
“shortest distance” is a term of magnitude, indicating only the 
quantity in question. Analyze the quality straightness as best you 
may; you can never deduce from it any determination of the quan¬ 
tity involved. But we immediately and intuitively perceive the 
proposition to be true, when we construct it; that is, in Kant’s 
phraseology, when, on paper or in imagination, we take two points, 
and draw two lines connecting them, the one straight, and the other 
broken or curved, we directly see that the former is the shorter, 
and in fact, is the shortest possible. And the truth thus intuitively 
known as such, though only in the particular instance of this one 
straight line, is immediately recognized as a universal truth, appli¬ 
cable to all straight lines; because the figure thus constructed is a 
determination of pure Space, no other element entering into it; 
and since Space is a form of our intuitive faculty itself, all other 
similar intuitions must conform to it, or be subject to the same 
law. The truth thus intuitively discerned is a truth not of this 
one figure alone, but of Space itself; that is, it is a perfect type 
of all similar constructions in Space. It is universally and neces¬ 
sarily true. 


186 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


In like manner we proceed, according to Kant, in all geometrical 
reasoning. We construct the required figure in imagination or on 
paper, and what is intuitively perceived to hold true of the rela¬ 
tions of .its parts in this one case, is thereby recognized as a uni¬ 
versal truth, owing to the uniform and catholic character of the 
one all-pervading space, a mental form, in which it is perceived. 

That the truths of Arithmetic are obtained in the same manner 
will be readAy admitted as soon as it is established that Arithmetic 
is the science of Time, just as Geometry is that of Space. Primarily, 
of course, Arithmetic is the science of number; but number itself 
is obtained only by the repeated addition of one unit to another. 
Time is needed for the successive apprehension, that is, for the 
counting, of distinct uniform impressions upon the mind, no matter 
of what nature these similar impressions are, or from what cause 
they proceed; because we can attend to only one impression at one 
time, or in one indivisible instant. The number Jive means to us 
the time required for the successive apprehension of five pulsations 
at the wrist, five beats of the pendulum, five dots on paper, five 
anything, no matter what the unit may be; because one unit or 
instant of time is perfectly like every other. This dependence of 
Number upon Time is indicated in most languages by multiplication 
being expressed as taking the multiplicand so many “ times;” thus, 
sechsmal, six fois, six times, one is six. Even when the numbers 
indicate ratios between spaces, we still speak of the numbers in 
terms of time; as when we say that the sun is so many times 
farther off than the moon,—not that it is so many spaces farther off. 
To perform arithmetical operations, we must, in Kantian phrase, 
construct the numbers employed; that is, represent them in some 
manner to sense or to the imagination, as by so many dots on the 
blackboard, so many fingers of the hand, so many marbles; and 
then we directly or intuitively perceive — in common phrase, we 
see — the answer to the question. The problem is thus solved by 
intuition, not by abstract reasoning, or by concepts. Thus, if we 
are asked why 5 -j- 7 = 12, we can give no reason for it,—no 
reason, I mean, dependent on any analysis of the two ideas, five 
and seven, since their sum, twelve, is not contained in either of 
them. But if we first construct the two numbers separately, but 
side by side, as by dots on the blackboard, and then count, or ap¬ 
prehend them successively, not as two groups, but as a single one, 
we intuitively perceive, or see, without reasoning, that they con¬ 
stitute twelve. And in like manner with subtraction. As all arith¬ 
metical operations are resolvable into repeated additions or subtrac- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ^ESTHETIC. 


187 


tions; as the artifice of the decimal notation relieves us from the 
necessity of constructing more than ten units in any one group, all 
the rest being performed by successive groupings or constructions; 
and as Algebra is only a combination of arithmetic and geometry, 
its operations, again, being performed by visible symbols and signs, 
which are a kind of short-hand, it is obvious that pure mathematics 
is exclusively an intuitive science. The whole difficulty in mas¬ 
tering it proceeds from the immense extent to which it may be 
pushed, the infinite range of its applications, and the difficulty of 
keeping steadily in view, or in memory, all the intuitions on which 
any one result depends. Each geometrical or arithmetical intu¬ 
ition, though it is apparently only of one instance or example, is 
in fact generalized, or made universal, by the universality of the 
Forms of space and time, through which all iutuitions must come. 
What is called “ the process of Mathematical proof ” is, in truth, 
only remembering and applying the results of previous intuitions. 

In further proof of the intuitive character of geometry, I borrow 
an illustration from Schopenhauer. Why is an equilateral right- 
angled triangle impossible ? There is no incompatibility of either 
of these predicates separately with the subject, since a triangle may 
be equilateral, or it may be right angled; but not both together. 
So also the two predicates are not incompatible with each other, 
as they are united in the case of a square. The understanding, 
by the aid of mere analysis and thought, can supply no reason why 
they should not be united in the case of a triangle. But as soon 
as we apply the test of construction , that is, attempt actually to 
form such a figure in imagination or on paper, we see that it is 
impossible. Assume that the person making the experiment has, as 
yet, only an imperfect idea of what a triangle is; still, he can, with¬ 
out the aid of experience, by merely constructing a triangle in his 
fancy, perfect his idea of it, and convince himself of the impossi¬ 
bility to all eternity of uniting the three ideas in one object. This 
is a synthetical judgment a priori , through which, previous to all 
experience, and yet regulating all past and all future experience, 
the mind establishes its own laws as objectively valid,— valid, that 
is, for everybody and for all time. 

What thing, asks Kant, more perfectly resembles another thing, 
than a right-hand glove does the left-hand glove of the same per¬ 
son, or than the reflection of an object in a mirror does that object ? 
But if held before a mirror, the right hand reflected becomes the 
left hand. Intuitive perception shows that one is the counterpart, 
that is, the reverse, of the other, a difference between them which 


188 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the mere Sense is incompetent to point out, as the same definition 
will apply to both. The parts, taken separately, of the two gloves 
are, when compared one with the other, precisely alike; but as 
these parts are put together in a different manner, their relations 
to each other are not the same; hence, as relations are cognized 
only by the understanding, the difference between right and left 
can be thought, but cannot be perceived by Sense, nor imagined. 

Empirical intuitions are strictly personal; they are incapable of 
definition, and so cannot be communicated to another. No one 
can impart to me his intuitions; no one can enable me to look out 
of his eyes. He can only hold up before me the same object which 
gives him certain intuitions, and trust, or take for granted, that I 
shall have the same intuitions from it that he has. I can teach a 
person what the odor of a rose is, only by applying a rose to his 
nostrils; what the color blue is, only by pointing him to the sky 
or some other blue object. But in the case of the geometrical 
relations of space, and the arithmetical relations of time, equally 
perceived by intuition, we know that they are absolute and uni¬ 
versal,— the same to all minds, the same to all time. What 
stronger proof could be found that these are inborn in our very 
nature, a portion of the framework of our mental being ? 

In like manner, it cannot be made known from mere concepts 
or definitions, but only from immediate or intuitive perception, 
what the relations of space are which we designate as Above and 
Below, Right and Left, Behind and Before, Inside and Outside. 
When we seek to determine the relations of these relations to each 
other, we find they constitute an intuitive, not a demonstrable, 
science; that is, they are immediately apprehended by the faculty 
of sense, but cannot be made out by deductions of the understand¬ 
ing. Thus, the Bottom of a thing cannot be interchanged with 
its Top, without thereby interchanging either its Behind and Before, 
or its Right and Left. Again, Inside cannot become Outside, ex¬ 
cept what was Above becomes Below, or what was. Right becomes 
Left. If we introduce the relations of the object to the position 
of the beholder, other interrelations become manifest. Thus, if I 
face the object from the north side of it, instead of the south, Right 
becomes Left, and Behind becomes Before; but Up does not be¬ 
come Down, nor Inside become Outside. 

Now these theorems are so far from being such general truths 
as have been formed by previous observation, abstraction, and gen¬ 
eralization, that probably up to the moment of hearing them enun¬ 
ciated, no one ever expressed them even to himself in general 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC. 


189 


terms. Yet you have acted upon them all your lives. And you 
have now admitted them as universal and necessary truths, not be¬ 
cause I have reasoned them out, or offered any argument in their 
support, for I have not done so; but because I have invited you to 
construct them in an actual example, — say, by this book ; and at 
once you intuitively perceive, that what was thus stated is not 
merely a particular truth,—true in the one instance of this book, 
but a universal truth, true of all objects and for all time; that it 
is an intuition, not like that of the color blue, which may be one 
thing to you and a very different thing to me, since I am color¬ 
blind, but an intuition which- must be the same for you and me, for 
all human minds. 

It is the very nature of Time and Space, then, (Kant would 
say, of our apprehension of Time and Space,) that all their parts 
stand in relations to each other which are absolutely determined 
and conditioned by some other of these parts. In Space, these 
relations are called Position and Magnitude; in Time, they are 
Succession and Number. These relations are peculiar, wholly dif¬ 
ferent from the relations of all our other representations and ideas; 
since the latter, as I have abundantly proved, cannot be perceived 
by Sense, but are discerned by the Understanding or thinking fac¬ 
ulty ; whereas those of Space and Time are not thought out, but 
are immediately perceived by the intuitive faculty. In the coex¬ 
istence of the parts of Space, and in the successive existence of the 
parts of Time, every part is precisely determined to be what it is 
through some other part. All Number, and therefore all Arith¬ 
metic, depends upon the nexus of the parts of Time ; all Geometry, 
on the nexus of the parts of Space. 

I have but one remark to make on the theory here set forth, 
which is certainly the most characteristic one, and the most fruit¬ 
ful in important conclusions, of all that ai’e propounded in the 
“ Critique of Pure Reason.” Kant’s doctrine of Transcendental 
Idealism, — that we know only the world of phenomena, or what 
appears, that of noumenal existence, or things as they are in them¬ 
selves, apart from their appearance, being unimaginable and incon¬ 
ceivable, — is an evident corollary from his doctrine of the subjec¬ 
tive character, or unreality, of Space and Time. Certainly, if things 
as they actually are cannot exist except out of Space and Time, the 
attempt to cognize them must be at once abandoned as hopeless. 
But I am now only concerned to remark, that the sole proof of the 
reality of Space and Time, apart from the mere representation of 
them in our minds, is the trustworthiness of memory. He who 


190 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


affects to distrust the evidence of this faculty must at once become 
not only an Idealist, but an Egoist, who exists only for the present 
moment; that is, he must give up the existence both of matter and 
mind, and admit /he reality only of the momentary thought now 
present to consciousness. Without memory, there is to us neither 
past nor future, since the latter is but a shadowy adumbration and 
repetition of the past, projected before us through a reliauce on the 
permanency of the laws of nature. Without memory, there is 
only the present moment, and existence for a thousand years is 
concentrated into the focus of the indivisible instant now present 
to consciousness. Fichte’s argument on this point is irrefutable. 
“ There is for us no past, except so far as it is thought in the pres¬ 
ent. Whatsoever was yesterday is not to-day, for by calling it 
‘ the past,’ we deny its present existence ; and even it was , only 
so far as I now think that it was. If you ask, ‘ Has not a time 
really passed away ’ ? by that very question you assume the ex¬ 
istence of a past; otherwise the question would have no meaning. 
If you do not assume a past, you will not ask the question, and 
then time has no past for you.” In like manner, on Kant’s princi¬ 
ples, Space is only a synthesis of innumerable parts; and as but 
one of these parts is cognized as now present to consciousness, the 
synthesis of all the parts is possible only through memory. Hence, 
if we cannot trust memory, Kant’s doctrine is true; Space and 
Time are only subjective intuitions, airy nothings, imaginary back¬ 
grounds, on which are painted an unreal and fantastic world. 

“ Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, 

But an eternal Now doth ever last.” 

Our time's a moment, and our space a dot; 

An instant’s reach of thought is all our lot. 

Life, to adopt a scholastic phrase, is but a nunc stans, a mathe¬ 
matical point, an instant that is forever repeated. 

But the Positivist doctrine, that nothing exists to us but the 
present state of consciousness, what we now feel or think, all else 
being a baseless inference, annihilates memory, and thereby annihi¬ 
lates Space and Time. The brute lives only in the present; aud 
man, according to this doctrine, is a brute. Birth is a fable, and 
death has no meaning; or rather, at every instant, our existence 
both begins and ends. 

Indeed, Kant’s skepticism, which pervades his whole work, is 
very brief and summary. He says, all our knowledge is either 
empirical or a priori. Is it the former ? Then it is neither uni¬ 
versal nor necessary; it is merely an impression on an individual 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 


191 


mind, without any guaranty. Away with it! Is it the latter ? 
Then, for the very reason that it is universal and necessary, it is 
only a phase of mind, a form of thought. Reject it! Then the 
conclusion of the whole matter is, that we have no knowledge at 
all deserving the name. Kant’s theory preserves, and even, I 
may say, demonstrates, the existence of innate truths, — of prim¬ 
itive and irresistible cognitions a priori. But by limiting the 
application of them exclusively to the field of experience, by 
asserting their subjective character, and thereby denying that they 
give us any knowledge of things as they really are, he preserves 
them only in the interests of skepticism, and makes them the 
foundation, in fact, of. a system which resolves all our beliefs into 
mere illusions and dreams. This disheartening result is aptly 
described by Madame de Stael, when she says that he caused 
Philosophy, like an enraged magician, to set fire to the edifice on 
which she had lavished all the prodigies of her skill. 


CHAPTER XII. 


Kant’s “ Critique ” continued. Transcendental Logic. 

"We come now to Transcendental Logic, or the analysis of the 
thinking faculty of the Understanding, our object being to ascertain 
if this also contains a priori elements, or Forms of cognition ; and 
if so, to define their number and character, and prescribe the ter¬ 
ritory within which they can be legitimately used. The science of 
sensuous objects constructed a priori , that is, in the a priori intu¬ 
itions of Space and Time, is pure Mathematics ; and we have 
shown the nature, and proved the validity, of the conclusions of 
this science. But there is also a science of ordinary sensuous ob¬ 
jects, which is Physics, and of super-sensuous objects, which is 
Metaphysics, or Ontology. Are there any a priori elements in 
the faculty of the Understanding, which will perform the same 
service for these two sciences as those of the faculty of Sense did 
for Mathematics? In order to answer this question, we must 
analyze minutely and carefully the mental process whereby we 
apprehend in thought any complex object of sense, such as a tree 
or flower, and thus, in vulgar phrase, take it in, and understand it 
as one whole. 

The function of the Understanding, as I have said, is to com¬ 
pare, to apprehend relations, and through these to perform a syn¬ 
thesis, that is, to unite parts into a whole, and predicates to sub¬ 
jects, by means of judgments. There cannot be any knowledge 
without an object of knowledge, and any such object must be a 
whole, formed by that synthesis of the parts which follows from an 
apprehension of such relations between these parts as will permit 
their union with each other. The faculty of Sense, as we have 
seen, offers us only a manifold of intuition, a succession of units 
separately perceived, only one of them being present to the mind 
at one time. “ Every intuition,” says Kant, “ contains in itself a 
Manifold, or plurality of constituent parts, though it would not 
be presented to the mind as such, if we did not distinguish the 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


193 


lapse of time while the impressions were succeeding each other; 
for as contained in a single moment , no Presentation can ever be 
anything else than an absolute unit.” Even the a priori forms of 
Space and Time, because they are mere Forms without Matter, can 
give us only blank figures constructed in empty space, and aggre¬ 
gates of units considered merely numerically, without any qualities 
to distinguish one unit from another; that is, they can give us 
only a synopsis of empty parts, but not a synthesis of sensible 
qualities, such as is necessary to constitute an object of actual 
knowledge. Such attributes as a definite weight, hardness, shape, 
taste, and smell must be put together in order to construct a cog¬ 
nizable object of experience. But these attributes, or rather the 
sensations which are so called, are successively apprehended as 
distinct states of consciousness, but one being before the mind at 
one time; and this one necessarily disappearing before the next 
can follow. How can we put together a cognizable whole, how 
build a house, out of these minute disjointed fragments, no two of 
which can be taken up, or can even exist, together? We must 
call in the aid of another faculty, the Imagination or picture-form¬ 
ing power of the mind, and of another principle, which Kant de¬ 
nominates, in his usual uncouth phraseology, “ the synthetical unity 
of apperception.” 

Imagination can do what the intuitive faculty cannot: namely, 
it can take up together the parts of the manifold, and even hold 
them together, or all at once, as one picture, before the mental ap¬ 
prehension. Thus I can have what may be called a synoptical 
view — a coup d’oeil — of the cognizable object as one whole. 
But the Imagination only brings them together in mere juxtaposi¬ 
tion, and has no power to think them in their appropriate relations, 
and so necessarily unite them firmly as one thinkable aggregate. 
And what assures me that the parts thus reproduced, and put to¬ 
gether in Imagination, are the very same parts that I intuited or 
perceived a moment ago ? How can I be sure that the power here 
at work is the productive Imagination, as employed in memory, 
bringing up actual sensations out of the past, and not merely the 
reproductive Imagination, as employed in pure fancy, building up 
castles in the air out of dream-intuitions ? I must not only 
unite the parts, but recognize them as former units of perception ; 
and this Imagination alone cannot do. Such recognition is possi¬ 
ble only through Consciousness, through a comparison of the two 
presentations, the one of which was actually intuited a moment 
ago, and the other is now reproduced as its legitimate represen- 
13 



194 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


tative. No other power than Consciousness can assure me, as the 
result of such comparison, that the two are identical. But the 
empirical or a posteriori Consciousness changes from one moment 
to another, — a Proteus who is never the same for two successive 
instants. As fleeting in itself as the units, of intuition which it 
witnesses, it cannot certify to their identity. Then there must be 
another, an unchangeable Consciousness, the Consciousness of my¬ 
self, of my own mental identity, under all the fleeting states of 
empirical Consciousness which make up my individual being. This 
Self-Consciousness, which Kant, by a word borrowed from Leib¬ 
nitz, calls “ apperception,” is pure or a priori ; for, far from being 
derived from experience, it precedes it, is a condition of it, for 
without it experience would not be possible. Experience is the 
aggregate cognition of objects ; and I could not cognize a single 
object, if this pure and primitive Consciousness were not at hand 
to aid me in putting together the parts of the “ manifold of intui¬ 
tion,” by bearing witness to the identity of those parts with the 
units perceived a moment ago. It bears witness to their identity 
only through asserting its own identity. Thus the synthetical 
unity of apprehension, in KaDtian phrase, is possible only through 
the transcendental unity of Self-Consciousness. 

Now, this original unity of Self-Consciousness is possible only 
under the condition, that all my presentations can be attended by 
the Consciousness “ I think ; ” that is, I am the thinking person in 
this thought. Suppose the series constituting “ the manifold of 
^intuition ” to be represented by the letters A, B, C, D ; and that 
I have already arrived at the end of this manifold, that is, at the 
letter D. Now the condition of the synthesis is, that I, who 
think D, am the same I who formerly thought C, B, and A ; and 
through the thought of this my manifold as unity, I first become 1, 
or first think myself as the identical in the manifold. I first be¬ 
come conscious of my own unity and identity, through thinking 
the manifold of experience into unity. 

This, says Kant, is the highest principle of all exercise of the 
Understanding, of all Thought; for, to adopt his own language, 
“ the manifold representations which are given in an intuition 
would not be all of them my representations, if they did not all 
belong to one Self-Consciousness; that is, as my representations, 
thej must conform to the conditions under which alone they can 
exist all together in a common Self-Consciousness ; since otherwise 
they would not all belong to me.” The thought that they do all 
belong to me is, therefore, just the same as the thought, “ I unite, or 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


195 


can unite, them all in one Consciousness.” Thus the recognition 
of my own personal identity, — that the “ I myself ” remembering 
at one moment is one and the same with the “I myself” remem¬ 
bered at another moment, — is the foundation of all experience, 
without which the cognition of a single object would be impossible ; 
for without it, the units making up the manifold constituting that 
object could not possibly be put together. 

Here, surely, is an important and fruitful truth first admirably 
illustrated and proved by the great Transcendentalist. But with 
his usual perverse love of system, and bias towards a foregone 
skeptical conclusion, he proceeds immediately to pull down the 
edifice which he has just built up. Just as he had before asserted 
the unreality — the exclusively subjective character, of our intui¬ 
tions of Space and Time, for the very reason that we cannot pos¬ 
sibly believe, or even imagine, them to be unreal — for the very 
reason that they are a 'priori , innate, primitive, universal, and 
necessary; so he now, on the ground that we cannot help believ¬ 
ing our personal existence and identity, since it is avouched by an 
a priori self-consciousness, without which all experience, all cogni¬ 
tion, would be impossible, — on this ground, I say, he asserts that 
such consciousness exists only in behoof of experience, being a 
sort of necessary illusion for that purpose, but without any reality 
as a thing in itself, and without any applicability beyond the bounds 
of experience. But I cannot dwell upon this criticism now, but 
must hasten on in order to preserve the thread of connection in 
setting forth Kant’s system as a whole. 

But one step more is needed in order to complete this Kantian 
analysis of the process whereby we cognize any object whatever ; 
and it is a very important step, as it first introduces the action of 
“ the Categories,” — those pure a priori Concepts which are the 
Forms of the Understanding, just as Time and Space are the 
Forms of the Faculty of Sense. The nature and genesis of these 
Categories are soon to be explained at length ; here it is enough 
to say, that among them are found such Concepts as those of unity, 

; plurality, reality, substance , cause , etc. Now Kant says rightly, I 
could not think the units of intuition as mine, thereby bringing 
them into a common consciousness, and also unite them into one 
object of thought and experience, without the aid of such Catego¬ 
ries, or Forms of the Understanding, as are here mentioned. For 
in order to cognize any object of experience, I must think it as 
me, as real, as a substance in which attributes inhere, as standing 
to some other object in the relation of cause or effect, etc. 


196 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


What Kant calls the “ Deduction of the Categories ” is the jus¬ 
tification of them, or the proof that the use which we make of 
them in thinking an object is a legitimate, and not an arbitrary, 
proceeding ; just as a lawyer proves his point in court by deducing 
it from some acknowledged legal principle. And such “ Deduc¬ 
tion ” or legitimation in this case is now obvious enough. Thus : 
without Time and Space, which are the universal and a priori 
Forms of Sense, no single intuitions, as the data or Matter of per¬ 
ception, would be possible. In like manner, without the Catego¬ 
ries, which are the a priori Forms of Thought, no object of experi¬ 
ence, that is, no synthesis of the data of perception into a thinkable 
whole, would be possible. We are justified, then, in using them 
so far as to constitute experience, or to render experience possible ; 
but no farther. We are justified in applying them to phenomena , 
that is, to objects as they appear to our minds, but not to nou- 
mena , or things as they really are. 

Strictly speaking, the object which we have been speaking of, as 
constructed by synthesis, is not the individual or singular object, 
since this is intuited by the faculty of Sense ; but it is the Con¬ 
cept, or abstract general idea, of the class to which this individual 
belongs. The conceived object, or Concept, is thought by the 
understanding; the perceived object is intuited piecemeal by 
Sense. We do not think this one individual tree or book, but the 
Concept tree or hook in general, under which this one is comprised. 
Hence, we think an individual object not directly, but only medi¬ 
ately, under a Concept; as when we say, “ This one individual 
thing which I now see is a tree ; ” and only when we are able to 
say this, do we properly know or have a cognition of it. This fact 
is recognized in common language; for when I see a strange and 
peculiar object for the first time, not having any previously formed 
Concept to which I can refer it, I say, “ I don’t know what this 
is.” But when coming to a familiar object, I say, “ Oh, I know 
this ; this is a tree.” Now, the mental operation of thus referring 
an individual thing to the Concept, or general idea of the class, 
under which it belongs, — and of thinking it through that Con¬ 
cept, an operation essential to and constitutive of knowledge prop¬ 
erl) so called, — is a Judgment. To adopt Kantian phraseology, 
— we judge, and thereby know, when we bring the manifold of 
individual intuitions into the synthetic unity of apprehension, and 
place it under a preformed Concept lying ready for it in the 
Understanding. 

I would not use this detestable jargon of technicalities at all, if 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


197 


st were not for the purpose of enabling others to study Kant’s 
writings for themselves. His fondness for it, as his own invention, 
was his great weakness ; and his adoption of it has perplexed and 
confused for all time, not only his own philosophy, but that of all 
German metaphysics since his day, corrupted in this respect by his 
example. 

Of course, most of these preformed Concepts thus lying ready 
in the understanding for individual things to be subsumed under 
them, are empirical Concepts, derived from expenence. I have 
learned from previous observation, or information derived from 
others, what tree, flower, book, etc., are; and I am therefore able to 
recognize (i. e., know over again) any individual thing belonging 
nnder these Concepts, and thereby to call it by its right name. 
Though I never saw this individual thing before, I can still say, 
“ I know this ; it is a book,” — or whatever it may be. But we 
now come to the great problem of Transcendental Logic, and ask 
ourselves,—Are there, thus lying preformed in the Understanding, 
any pure or a priori Concepts, not derived from experience, be¬ 
cause, without them, no experience would be possible ? The an¬ 
swer to this question will lead to the discovery and complete 
enumeration of the Categories ; but the answer must be postponed 
a while longer. 

What I have thus far explained is Kant’s analysis of the act of 
perception, and his Deduction of the Categories, as set forth in 
the first edition of the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” published in 
1781. But in the second revised edition, which appeared six years 
later, these two important portions of his theory are essentially 
modified, the passages relating to them being almost entirely re¬ 
written. In the preface to this second edition, Kant declares that 
these alterations do not affect the substance of the doctrines or 
opinions first set forth, or even the grounds of proof by which they 
were supported, but were intended solely to remove obscurity in 
the exposition of them, and thereby to obviate some difficulties and 
misconceptions to which the want of perspicuity had given rise. 
But as thus understood, this attempt to improve his work was cer¬ 
tainly a lamentable failure ^.for it is admitted on all hands, that the 
revised exposition of the theory is ten times more obscure and 
enigmatical than the form in which it was first propounded. It 
has led to endless disputes respecting the proper interpretation of 
Kant’s opinions, and some high authorities in Germany, Schopen¬ 
hauer included, pronounce it utterly unintelligible. Kuno Fischer 
puts it almost entirely aside, and restricts his analysis of the system 


198 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


to the first edition. The truth is, as it seems to me, that in the 
second edition of his work, Kant is endeavoring to answer his crit¬ 
ics, who had pushed his premises to certain conclusions which he 
was by no means prepared to admit. Without openly or con¬ 
sciously shifting his ground, he modifies his language, and rewrites 
a considerable portion of his work, hoping thereby to refute the 
inferences and objections of his reviewers. But he succeeds only 
in impairing the harmony between the various parts of his system, 
in loading it with ambiguities, and in sacrificing precision aud 
definiteness of statement altogether. 

The inevitable conclusion from the principles of the Transcenden¬ 
tal Philosophy, said its critics, is a system of Idealism, and even of 
Egoism or “ Solipsismus,” — that there is no real existence outside 
the mind of the thinker. Kant was particularly sensitive about 
such a charge, and the following passage from his “ Prolegomena 
to every future System of Metaphysics,” published only two years 
after the first edition of his “ Critique,” is his almost passionate 
denial of the fairness of the accusation. “ Idealism,” he says, “ con¬ 
sists in the assertion that thinking beings are the only ones, all the 
other things, which we suppose that we perceive, being only im¬ 
pressions made upon the mind without any real object correspond¬ 
ing to them outside of the thinker. On the contrary, I say, things 
are given to us as real objects of our senses outside of ourselves, 
but we know nothing of what these things are in themselves, per 
se, since we know only their phenomena , that is, the impressions 
which they create in us when they affect our organs. Surely, then, 
I avow that there are bodies out of our minds, and that the word 
‘ body ’ signifies merely the appearance to us of an object which, 
though incognizable per se, is none the less real. Can this doc¬ 
trine be called Idealism ? Nay, it is just the reverse.” He makes 
a further attempt to fortify this position, by inserting, in the second 
edition of the “ Critique,” a long and obscure passage which he 
calls a “ Refutation of Idealism.” But he finds it very difficult to 
satisfy himself on this point, as he gives no less than three distinct 
versions of this “ Refutation ” in the same volume, one in a long 
foot-note to the Preface, and another in a foot-note to the passage as 
originally inserted in the text. And in spite of these reclamations, 
I believe every attentive reader of what precedes will agree with 
me in holding that the inevitable outcome of Kant’s theory as a 
whole, or the conclusion to which the admission of his premises 
irresistibly leads, is Idealism pure and simple. His noumenon or 
ding-an-sich, is a baseless supposition, a merely arbitrary and in- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


199 


conceivable creation of thought. On this point, I agree with Kuno 
Fischer, and not with Trendelenburg, the two who recently had a 
long and fierce controversy about it, which was terminated only by 
the death of one of the disputants. 

Kant damaged his work still further in the second edition, when 
he attempted to retract what he had once affirmed in respect to 
the unity and identity of our primitive self-consciousness. To this 
end, he rewrote his “ Deduction of the Categories,” omitting all that 
he had said about the necessity of a recognition of the units of a 
manifold by the identical Ego of pure consciousness, and essentially 
modifying his long chapter on what he calls the “ Paralogisms of 
Rational Psychology.” He had summed up his former doctrine 
by saying that “ a threefold synthesis is necessary for any cognition 
of an object: namely, 1. the synthesis of apprehending the sev¬ 
eral units as modifications of the mind in the act of perception ; 
2, the synthesis of reproducing them in the imagination; and, 3, 
the synthesis of recognizing the same in the concept of the object.” 
But in the confused and obscure version of the same theory in the 
second edition, we hear no more of this third act of the synthesis; 
recognition is not even mentioned, but a sort of unity is given to 
the manifold through the consciousness “ I think,” which neces¬ 
sarily accompanies every act of intuition when it is clearly brought 
before the mind, since otherwise it would not be known as my act. 
This “ I think ” is what he now calls “ pure and primitive apper¬ 
ception ; ” but he holds that it is a mere Form of Thought, without 
Matter, and that it is also a factitious product, being itself generated 
in the very act of the synthesis of a manifold which it accompanies 
and renders possible. It gives us no assurance, then, of the real 
existence of one and the same Ego present in every act of mind. 

Thus, in his second edition, Kant says, “only through the pro¬ 
cess whereby I can unite a manifold of given presentations in one 
consciousness,” that is, whereby I throw them into a group pre¬ 
sented by a single act of mind, “ is it possible that I can bring 
before myself the identity of consciousness in first receiving these 
several presentations; and this is equivalent to saying, that the 
analytical unity of apperception [*. e., the unity and identity of the 
Ego in successive states of mind] becomes possible only by pre¬ 
supposing a synthetical unity,” in which a manifold has been pre¬ 
viously united into one whole. And again: “ That synthetical 
unity of the manifold of intuition, which is given a priori , is 
therefore the ground and reason of the identity of apperception 
itself, which a priori precedes all my definite thinking.” Formerly, 


200 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


it was the “ unity of apperception ” which made the synthesis of 
intuitions possible, through recognizing them as previous states of 
mind; now, it is the synthesis of intuitions which makes the 
“unity of apperception ” possible. And in either case, the use of 
the Categories is necessary in order to enable me to think a plu¬ 
rality as one whole. 

The process of forming these two factitious units, one of which 
is the thinking Subject, or the Ego of self-consciousness, and the 
other is the Object thought, may be thus illustrated. In a series 
of distinct states of my empirical consciousness, I intuit successively 
a small spheroidal shape, a yellow color, a peculiar odor, taste, 
etc., which constitute the manifold of intuition called an orange; 
and through the same unifying act of the Understanding whereby, 
with the aid of the Categories, I synthesize the sensible qualities 
into one Object, I also unite the four distinct Subjects of intuition 
into the one pure Ego of consciousness, which is now cognized as 
identical with itself throughout the process; siuce otherwise the 
objective synthesis would not be possible. Thus : — 

( Ego intuit a spheroidal shape. \ 

J Ego intuit a yellow color. ! = The single object 

j Ego intuit a certain odor. r called an orange. 

V Ego intuit a certain taste. ) 

In other words, I “ make believe ” that I myself am one being, in 
order to be able to unite several distinct qualities into one object. 
The theory is intricate, artificial, and pedantic to excess; but the 
invention of it proves that Kant fully appreciated the importance 
of the fact, which is too frequently overlooked or forgotten, that 
the unity and identity of self-consciousness must be presupposed, 
before even the simplest act of cognition becomes possible. In 
attempting to avoid the consequences of having admitted this fact, 
he falls into the error, which, here and elsewhere, is a fundamental 
one in his system, of degrading Consciousness into a mere species of 
Sense, calling it the internal Sense, and thereby referring it solely 
to the receptivity of mind, that is, to its power of passively receiv¬ 
ing impressions, instead of making it a part of the spontaneity 
whereby the mind reacts upon and modifies its impressions. “ We 
know ourselves only by the internal Sense,” he says, — that is, as a 
succession of distinct, states of mind, “ and therefore only as phe¬ 
nomena.” Herein he exposes himself to a portion of the pithy 
criticism which he makes upon two of his distinguished predeces¬ 
sors : “ Leibnitz,” he says, “ intellectualizes sensible phenomena ; 
Locke sensualizes the concepts of the understanding.” Kant hirn- 


The pure Ego of conscious¬ 
ness, one and identical = 
with itself. 


kant’s transcendental logic. 201 

Belf does worse than Locke, for he sensualizes Consciousness it¬ 
self. 

The radical difference between the two faculties is easily pointed 
out. The sole function of Sense, properly so called, is passively to 
receive impressions made upon it from without, these being only 
effects, or at best, images, of something external, something which 
is at any rate distinct from ourselves. This “ something,” which 
is their source or prototype, is not cognized directly and in itself, 
but is known vicariously through representations of it in the mind ; 
and these representations of it are therefore properly called phe¬ 
nomena, or mere appearances. But Consciousness directly and im¬ 
mediately apprehends Self as the thing itself to the existence of 
which it testifies. It presents to us, not merely certain states of 
the Ego, but the Ego itself as existing in those states. It wit¬ 
nesses and reports, not so much the manifestation, as the thing 
manifested; not the abstract cogitatio, but the concrete ego cogito ; 
not merely volition or hunger , but the compound facts, I will and 
I am hungry. For is it not evident, that either of these states of 
mind would be nothing to me, if it were not known at the moment 
to be a state of myself ? Hence, every conscious state is a distinct 
phase of se^-consciousness. 

It is further evident that Consciousness, unlike Sense, belongs to 
the spontaneity of mind, because it becomes vivid and keen when 
the attention is roused, but flags and dies out when monotony and 
weariness prevail. When fatigued and sleepy, conversation or 
music passes unheeded; yet both must be heard, for the merely 
passive Sense must receive whatever comes. Kant’s ingenious but 
far-fetched theory, that the identity of the self-conscious Ego in 
successive mental states is a mere fiction of thought, produced by 
the same unifying act whereby several qualities are grasped to¬ 
gether into one object, is sufficiently disproved by the simple fact, 
that we are distinctly conscious of the unity and identity of Self 
as far back as memory extends, when we pass in review many acts 
of mind, which are not united into one object, but are divided 
among a multitude of interesting scenes and events. The phe¬ 
nomena reviewed are multiform, but they are all witnessed and 
attested by one and the same Self, as portions of its own experience. 
This fact is so evident and striking that, while still discussing the 
intricate theory now in question, it forces Kant to contradict him¬ 
self by making this plain admission : “ My own existence indeed 
is not a phenomenon, and still less is it a mere illusion.” Then it 
must be a noumenon, or ding-an-sich , — the very truth for which 
I am here contending. 


202 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


We must now follow Kant in his detailed exposition of the 
nature of the Categories; and to this end, we again take up the 
question, whether, among the Concepts under which individual in¬ 
tuitions are subsumed, there are not some which are pure and a 
| priori , lying preformed in the Understanding, and which are not 
derived from experience, because without them no experience 
would be possible. 

We are able at once to reply, —Yes ; there is at least one such 
a priori Concept; namely, Cause, and its correlative, Effect. All, 
both physicists and metaphysicians, both Transcendentalists and Pos¬ 
itivists, now admit with one voice, that we have never had experi¬ 
ence in the material universe of a true Cause, so that we could 
know it as such, and distinguish it from a totally different thing, 
though often confounded with it, namely, an invariable antecedent. 
Yet even Hume and the Positivists would readily admit that we have 
a Concept of Cause, i. e., an abstract general idea of it; since other¬ 
wise, they could not pronounce, as they do so dogmatically, that no 
true Cause ever has been, or ever will be, discovered. They must 
know very precisely what that is which, they say, is thus undiscovera- 
ble. Perhaps, if they were better logicians, they would explain how 
it is that they obtained this idea, though they have had no experi¬ 
ence from which it could be derived, and though they declare with 
undoubting confidence, that all our knowledge comes from experi¬ 
ence. Till they do this, till they explain how they got the idea of 
Power, which is a necessary element in the idea of Causality, I must 
be content either to believe with Kant, that it is a pure Concept a 
priori, lying preformed in the Understanding, or to maintain that 
it comes from internal experience, from self-consciousness of my 
own Power to will. As to getting it indirectly through explana¬ 
tion by words, we need only observe that Power is a simple idea, 
and, as such, can no more be communicated by words than we can 
teach a congenitally blind person what the sensation is which we 
call a blue color. 

But Kant is not content, as he says, to pick up at hap-hazard, 
after long search and trial, a few Concepts a priori, like that of 
Cause; for if thus obtained, we could never be sure that the list 
of them was 1 complete, or that they were arranged in order, so as 
to form a systematic whole. With his usual fanaticism for system 
and completeness, he insists that there must be a principle and a 
ready prepared rule, according to which all may be discovered, and 
its proper place be assigned to each, thus leaving nothing to choice 
or chance. Such a principle results from what has now been ex- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


203 


plained, that all the operations of the Understanding, both in form¬ 
ing Concepts and subsuming individuals under them, may be re¬ 
duced to Judgments, “ so that the Understanding may be described 
as the faculty of judging.” Then, all a priori Concepts, which 
come from the pure Understanding without the aid of experience, 
must be equal in number, and correspond perfectly, to the pure 
Judgments that we can form ; in short, they must be those cog¬ 
nitions which we can have about the mere Form of a Judgment, 
without considering its Matter; in other words, those which relate 
merely to the act of judging , irrespective of what we are judging 
about; since the Matter, or what we are judging about, is all that 
is furnished by experience. These necessary Logical Forms, of 
course, enter into and help to constitute every act of judgment 
whereby I think any object of experience, either in itself, as a man¬ 
ifold of intuition grasped together into one whole, or in its neces¬ 
sary relations with other phenomena, as their cause, effect, substance, 
attribute, etc. When thus employed, they are “ the Categories,” 
or the several a priori Concepts under which phenomena must be 
subsumed, in order that we may think the synthesis of these phe¬ 
nomena to be objectively valid for all experience. Now, the science 
of pure logic tells us how many things can be thus determined 
about the mere act of Judging considered simply as such, or irre¬ 
spective of its Matter, which may be designated for this purpose 
by mere letters of the alphabet, as in algebra; since these letters 
stand for any Matter whatever, — that is, for no matter at all. 
Then the Judgment or the equation must hold true, whatever value 
we assign to a, b, c, d, etc., even if we make them equal to zero, —■ 
t. e., reduce them to nothing. Logic tells us we may, in this man¬ 
ner, determine, first, the Quantity of the Judgment, whether it in¬ 
cludes all, some, or one of the objects included under a Concept. 
Secondly, we may determine the Quality of the Judgment, whether 
it affirms, denies, or denies under the form of affirming. Thirdly, 
we may determine the Relation between its two Terms, which must 
be either Categorical, Hypothetical, or Disjunctive. Fourthly, and 
lastly, we determine its Modality, as either Problematic, Assertoric, 
or Apodeictic. In this manner, we can answer the four questions 
which may be asked about any Judgment whatsoever, irrespective 
of its Matter; namely, Quanta ? qualis ? quce ? quomodo? Thus we 
have a table of twelve possible forms of Judgment, distributed into 
four classes, three in each. And corresponding precisely with these, 
because deduced from them, we have a table of the twelve pure 
Concepts of the Understanding, applying a priori to objects of 


204 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


intuition in general, — that is, to all of which we can possibly have 
experience, or which exist in Space and Time. These last Kant 
denotes, by a term borrowed from Aristotle, the Categories. If 
we think an object at all, that is, if we reduce any manifold of in¬ 
tuition to synthetical unity of apprehension, we must do so under 
one of each of these four classes of Categories. 

The complete Table of these Logical Forms, with their corre¬ 
sponding Categories, may be thus presented: — 


Logical Forms. 

Categories. 

1. Quantity. 

Formulas. 


Singular. 

This A is B. 

Unity. 

Particular. 

Some A are B. 

Plurality. 

Universal. 

All A are B. 

Totality. 

2 . Quality. 



Affirmative. 

A is B. 

Reality. 

Negative. 

A is not B. 

Negation. 

Infinite. 

A is non-B. 

Limitation. 

3. Relation. 




Categorical. 
Hypothetical. 
Disjunctive. 
4. Modality. 

Problematic. 

Assertoric. 

Apodeictic. 


A is B. 

If A is B, C is D. 
A is either B or C. 

A may be B. 

A is B. 

A must be B. 


Substance and Attribute. 

Cause and Effect. 

Reciprocity (Action and Reaction). 

Possibility — Impossibility. 
Existence — Non-existence. 
Necessity — Contingency. 


We need not.criticize this Table further than to say, that Kant’s 
fondness for system, and his determination to make out a complete 
correspondence between logical forms and metaphysical concepts, 
evidently led him astray so far as to make the second Category 
under the head of Modality, Existence and Non-existence, a mere 
repetition of the first and second, Reality and Negation, under the 
head of Quality. 

He remarks that the four classes may be ranked into two divis¬ 
ions, the first of which contains the mathematical Categories of 
Quantity and Quality, both of which belong to any object of ex¬ 
perience when considered separately or by itself; while in the 
second division are found the dynamical Categories, under which 
two or more of these objects are thought, when they are viewed in 
their relations either to each other or to the understanding which 
thinks them. Hence, those in the second division have correlates, 
while those in the first have none. Also, the third Category in 
each class always arises from a combination of the first with the 
second. Thus, Totality is nothing but Plurality regarded as Unity; 
Limitation is Reality combined with Negation; Reciprocity is 
Substance considered both as acting and acted upon, or as Cause 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


205 


and Effect at the same moment; and Necessity is Existence which 
is determined to be such merely by the Possibility of its Existence, 
or which must be, if it be not self-contradictory. 

The Categories, since they are pure, are judging Concepts; 
while those of empirical origin are representing Concepts. Thus, 
in applying the Category of Cause, I do not form or bring forward 
any new object of thought, but take two previously formed empir¬ 
ical Concepts, and judge that the one is the Cause of the other. 
Tku3, the vulgar, having framed from their former experieuce a 
cognition of what fire and heat are, judge that the former causes 
the latter. The function or office of the Categories, then, is not 
to present objects, but to unite presentations. Objects are given 
to us by intuition, but never the union or synthesis of these ob¬ 
jects. A necessary union must depend on the mere Form of the 
Judgment, after we have abstracted its Matter, which is of em¬ 
pirical origin, and is therefore contingent. Kant distinguishes 
subjective from objective judgments by denominating the former 
Judgments-of-perception, while he calls the latter Judgments-of- 
experience. Thus, to take his own example, my judgment that 
“ this room is warm ” is merely subjective; for it is not necessarily 
true for another person, to whom it may appear cool, nor even to 
myself at another time, when the air is still warmer out of doors. 
This, therefore, is merely a Judgment-of-perception. On the other 
hand, the scientific Judgment-of-experience will so connect phe¬ 
nomena that the union of them shall appear universal and neces¬ 
sary, — true not only for me, but for all mankind, and for all time. 
An objective phenomenon , it may be remarked, is one which I rep¬ 
resent as external to myself — that is, as existing in space. But 
an objective judgment is one that is not peculiar to myself, but 
must be shared by all persons, since it results necessarily from the 
action of the human mind. What then must be added to a merely 
subjective Judgment-of-perception, in order to convert it into an 
objective Judgment-of-experience ? 

Kant says, the judgment that “ the sun warms the room ” ac¬ 
quires objective or universal validity, and thereby becomes a 
Judgment-of-experience, through being subsumed under the Cate¬ 
gory of Cause and Effect. In this case, the union is a necessary one, 
and therefore universal; for if the sun is conceived to be the Cause, 
the warmth must follow as its Effect. Since the Categories are 
those forms in which pure consciousness unites the manifold of 
intuition, they are the conditions under which the phenomena are 
so united, and therefore they are the rules or laws of this union. Ex' 


206 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


perience gives us no case of a necessary union between two events ; 
all its connections are contingent, depending merely upon habitual 
antecedence and consequence. Though light has succeeded dark¬ 
ness every day since the creation of the world, it may not so suc¬ 
ceed, the sun may not rise, to-morrow. Then, how came the Un¬ 
derstanding ever to think of such a necessary connection ? Be¬ 
cause, answers Kant, it has the pure or a priori Form of Thought, 
the second Category under the head of Relation, which is the Hy¬ 
pothetical Judgment, “ If A is B, C is D.” Here, the consequent, 
C is D, follows necessarily upon its ground or reason, A is B. 
And this is the very Form of the causal judgment. When we 
conceive the shining of the sun as the Cause, then the warming of 
the room must follow as its Effect. 

An Intuition evidently gives us no knowledge, except of its own 
existence, until it is thought in relation to its object, or rather to a 
Concept of that object ; that is, it would be merely a subjective 
affection of my mind, if it were experienced without any relation 
to the object to which it belongs, or to the source whence it 
comes. An Intuition of a fragment of color, green, for example, 
gives me no knowledge, till I refer it either to a spot of extended 
surface, say, foliage or grass, whence it came, or to a Concept 
formed from previous experience, of color in general, or even to 
a subjective source in some morbid affection of my nerves or organ 
of vision. Now, all Intuitions come from experience; or if you 
say, Space and Time do not thus come, because they are a priori 
Intuitions, I answer, that both Space and Time are completely void 
and indeterminate till they are constructed by the Imagination 
into some definite shape or quantity, say, a triangle or a circle, a 
minute or an hour. Then we must always find an object or a 
Concept to which a given Intuition may be attached. 

The next instance of the application of the Categories may be 
taken from that conception of the relation of attributes to a sub¬ 
stance, which is a necessary part of our concept of any material 
object whatsoever. According to what has just been said, an intui¬ 
tion of any quality, weight or hardness, for instance, would give me 
no knowledge, except it is thought in relation to its object, i. e., 
to the Substance in which it inheres. But the senses tell me nothing 
about Substance. I cannot even think it, except in relation to its 
attributes; and I cannot think the attributes as attributes, except 
in relation to the Substance. Each is thought only in and through 
the other. Evidently, then, what is here thought is a relation, 
and as such, it must be the work of the Understanding; it cannot 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


207 


be perceived by sense. Then whence comes the Concept of this 
relation, which is certainly objective or universal, since every mind 
must think hardness, weight, color, etc., as inherent in some sub¬ 
stance or thing; and further, too, that it is only the attributes which 
change and pass away, while the Substance is unchangeable and in¬ 
destructible ? Kant answers, that there must be an a priori Form 
of this relation in the Understanding, or rather in the pure Con¬ 
sciousness, free from any empirical element, which first grasps to¬ 
gether into unity the manifold of intuition and the Forms of the 
Understanding. He finds such a Form of Judgment in general in 
the Table of the Logical, i. e., the pure, Forms which he has iden¬ 
tified as the Categories,—namely, the first of the third class, Rela¬ 
tion, the categorical relation of a Subject to its Predicate. A is 
B ; snow is white; water is fluid; iron is malleable. Always this 
is the relation, this is even the meaning, of Subject and Predicate, 
that the latter inheres in the former, the former underlies the latter. 
Aristotle defines the Subject of a proposition as to iiroKcip^vov, that 
which lies under the Predicate, conditions it, and so is Substance ; 
while the Predicate, as a Mark or Accident, determines the Sub¬ 
ject, i. e., inheres in the Substance. If change takes place, if ice 
becomes water, or water becomes steam, still it is only the at¬ 
tributes, fluid, hard, or aeriform, that change; but the subject re¬ 
mains subject, the substance is unchangeable, not an atom of it 
is lost or created. Surely, we have no experience of this last 
mentioned fact, but we necessarily assume it. 

Let us take the next instance in the reverse order. The pure 
logical form of the Disjunctive Judgment, A is either B or C ; 
to which Category does this correspond ? Suppose that A is B ; 
then A is not C. Suppose A is not B; then it is C. And vice versa. 
This is a very peculiar case; B is at once the Cause and the Effect 
of C; C is at once the Cause and the Effect of B. Evidently 
this is the Category of reciprocal action, or mutual action and 
reaction, which is assumed as an axiom in mechanics, though ex¬ 
perience certainly cannot teach us that it must be so. 

Take the next case from the second Table, that of the difference 
in Quality, according as Judgments are either Affirmative, Nega¬ 
tive, or Negativo-Affirmative, or Infinite, as Kant chooses to call 
them ; because, by saying A is not-B, John is not-strong, I may 
make an infinity of other judgments respecting John, observing 
merely this one limitation, that strength be not attributed to 
him. Evidently these three Forms of judging are the founda¬ 
tions of the three Categories of Reality, of Non-Existence or 


208 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Unreality, and of Limited Existence. Things in themselves or 
as they really are, Noumena, lying beyond or behind the phe¬ 
nomena or mere manifestations to sense ; — are they realities, or 
unrealities, or a merely negative idea, what is not manifested ? 
Experience cannot tell us ; but we surely know what we mean 
when we ask the question. What is Existence ? Define it, if 
you can, without mere tautology. Hegel says,- it is nothing. 

Here, again, we observe the intermediate position of the Critical 
Philosophy. The Empiricists maintain, that we have no knowledge 
antecedent to experience; that we first perceive, through the 
senses, the individual objects and events which are presented to us, 
and from these data, by the way of analysis, abstraction, and gen¬ 
eralization, we obtain our simple and general conceptions of sub¬ 
stance, unity, existence, space, etc. Not so, says Kant; what you 
call a datum of experience is a complex, a manifold of intuition 
and of a priori forms of the understanding ; and you could not 
have any experience, you could not know any object or event to be 
what it is, if you had not previously possessed the elements out 
of which it is constituted, and had not put these together in the 
synthesis of pure consciousness, according to the necessary laws of 
the understanding. You ought first to show, what you cannot do, 
how experience is possible without the aid of the very elements 
which you vainly pretend to derive from experience. Your process 
is a varepov irporepov, a putting the cart before the horse. You de¬ 
rive the parent, the conceptions of substance , cause , unity , etc., 
from the child, — experience of objects; forgetting that these 
conceptions are needed to generate that experience; for, without 
them, you would have only a manifold of intuition, a multitude of 
units, or single and consecutive impressions on sense, without any 
power of grasping them together into one thinkable whole. 

On the other hand, he maintains, against the Dogmatists, that 
these a priori elements are mere empty Forms of Thought, which 
have no significance or utility till they are filled up with the per¬ 
ceptions of sense, thus constituting objects and events which can be 
only empirically known. Thus they aid to constitute experience, 
but give us not the slightest information respecting that which lies 
beyond the limits of experience. They have no meaning or ap¬ 
plicability beyond the world of phenomena, of that which appears. 
We must think according to the Categories; but that is no proof 
that things are what we necessarily conceive them to be. Granted 
that when I have sensations of color, weight, hardness, shape, etc., 
I must think a Substance under them, in which they are united, 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


209 


Still, I have no intuition of this Substance ; I can perceive only its 
qualities. The Substance, then, is unknowable; it is a mere ens 
rationis , Form without Matter, a mode in which I must think the 
sensations as qualities, that is, as constituting an object. 

We are now able to answer the second question involved in 
Kant’s fundamental problem, namely: How is a science of pure 
Physics possible ? That is, how are we able, independently of and 
anterior to any experience, to affirm certain universal fundamental 
principles, on which the whole of empirical physical science is 
based, and without which no progress in such science would be pos¬ 
sible ? The answer is, we are able to posit them through the Cat¬ 
egories, through which, as a priori , and therefore universal and 
necessary, laws or forms of pure Thought, we must think every 
object of experience. Every object of external intuition, in order 
to be conceived or thought, must be subject to the universal laws 
of thought. Hence we are enabled to affirm beforehand, and an¬ 
tecedent to any experience, that every external object must be ap¬ 
prehended both quantitatively and qualitatively ; — that is, under 
each of the first two tables of the Categories ; it must be appre¬ 
hended as an extensive magnitude, as so many superficial inches, 
feet, yards, acres, etc.; and it must be thought as an intensive mag¬ 
nitude, that is, as possessing one degree or another of hardness, con¬ 
sistency, weight, color, etc., which are only names for certain qualities 
conceived as existing in bodies corresponding to certain sensations 
in our minds. Again, under the third table of the Categories, it 
must be conceived as a Substance in which these qualities inhere ; 
and we must think that this substance persists or endures, any 
change affecting only the qualities ; and, therefore, that the quantity 
of this substance cannot be increased or diminished by a single atom, 
whatever may be the transformation of its qualities. Again, any 
change taking place even in the qualities, must be apprehended un¬ 
der the Categories of cause and effect, and of action and reaction; 
that is, we know, a priori , that every change is necessarily an 
effect of a preceding change, and a cause of a subsequent change, 
and that, in every application of force between coexistent objects, 
action and reaction must be equal. So, also, under the fourth table, 
every object of experience must be conceived as a possible, at* 
actual, or a necessary object. 

Summing up, we say, as Time and Space, the a priori forms 
of the Intuitive faculty, the Sense, render pure Mathematics pos¬ 
sible, so the Categories, which are the a priori forms of the Un- 
14 


210 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


derstanding, under which alone any object of experience can be 
conceived as existing, render pure physical science possible. 

Our abstract of Kant’s Transcendental Logic, or analysis of the 
a 'priori functions of the Understanding, would be very incomplete 
if we omitted to explain his system of Schematism , which is his 
theory of the machinery through which the Categories, which are 
the a priori Forms of Judgment, become capable of application to 
the empirical intuitions of sense. A bridge is necessary to form 
the junction, and we must show how this bridge is constructed. 
The Deduction of the Categories proved that the application of 
the Categories to the manifold of intuition is legitimate ; the doc¬ 
trine of Schematism shows how this application takes place. 

The union of Matter with Form, of the receptivity of sense 
with the spontaneity of thought, does not, whenever Matter is 
presented to us through sense, take place arbitrarily, by a sort of 
spontaneous agglutination of the two factors. Human conscious¬ 
ness is not like a cupboard with diverse compartments, which 
opens as often as there is anything to put into it, and in which 
every thing, unguided, finds at once its appropriate place. When 
our power of imagination forms a systematic whole by uniting 
units of sensation into objects of experience, it proceeds regularly, 
according to certain primitive fundamental laws or principles. The 
human mind may be regarded as a great living organism, which 
does not simply bolt its food, but digests and assimilates. it; — 
forms part of it into muscular fibre, part into cellular tissue, part 
into nerve and brain, part into bone, etc. The manifold of intui¬ 
tion is only the undigested food, the nutritive elements coming 
from without; Schematism is the process of digestion and assimila¬ 
tion; the Categories are the distinctive forms of nerve-fibre, cellu¬ 
lar tissue, skin, bone, etc., into which the food is ultimately worked 
up. The Imagination, indeed, adds no new forms, but applies the 
F/jrms or Concepts of the Understanding to the matter of sensible 
Intuition, and thereby fashions the latter into objective knowledge. 
The Imagination, according to Kant, is a sort of intermediate link 
between the Faculty of Sense and the Understanding, forming a 
bridge of connection between them. It is closely allied with Sense, 
because we can imagine only the Intuitions of Sense ; and it is 
allied with the Understanding, because, like that faculty, it per¬ 
forms a synthesis, or unites those Intuitions. 

The Categories are the rules of science relating to experience, 
just as Grammar contains the rules of language: things are the ob¬ 
jects of the former, words of the latter. But then we must know 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


211 


how to apply the rules, or rightly to subsume cases under them. 
When the phenomena and the rules or Concepts are homogeneous, 
both being empirical, there is no difficulty. Having the empirical 
Concept or rule of man in general, I know how to put together the 
units of intuition which make up my cognition of an individual 
man, say, John or William. I can judge that man is biped, is 
bimanous, is upright in gait, etc. But when the rules are the 
Categories, and so are heterogeneous with the phenomena, these 
being empirical, while the former, the Categories, are a priori , we 
need middle terms — schemata or bridges — to unite them. How 
can I judge the sun, that it is the cause of warmth, when I have 
no direct sensible perception of causality ? How can I judge that 
the substance of the water is unchanged, though its attributes are 
changed into those of ice or steam, when I have no immediate 
perception of Substance, apart from its qualities ? I need a middle 
term, or bridge, something which is sensuous or empirical in one 
aspect, and thus homogeneous on one side with the things of sense, 
and yet a priori , and so universal and necessary, in another aspect, 
thus approximating on the other hand to the nature of the Cate¬ 
gories. I need the aid of the productive Imagination, in. part to 
sublimate and purify the intuitions of sense, in part to sensualize 
the Categories, under an image, or something like an image, and 
thus to approximate the two factors of knowledge to each other. 
A Schema is not an image, but is a rule or law indicating the pro¬ 
cess through which an image, if it were possible, would be formed. 
Thus, a small number, as 5, can be presented in an image of five 
distinct dots ; but a larger number, as 97, unpicturable in itself, 
because the imagination cannot distinctly grasp so many dots, can 
be thought as a continuation of the process, the successive addition 
of units, through which the number 5 was presented. Hence, 
though we cannot directly image cause, substance, etc., we can rep¬ 
resent figuratively the process of forming such an image, and 
thus give a sort of diagram of the Concept. This diagram is the 
Schema. Such a Schema, for all the Categories, is Time, which, 
as the universal form of the internal sense or empirical con¬ 
sciousness, is the vehicle through which all objects of sense are 
conveyed to us; they must come to consciousness ftne after an¬ 
other, in successive moments of Time. Time constitutes the bridge 
that we need; for, as an a priori intuition, a universal though 
empty form of consciousness, it is homogeneous with the Cate¬ 
gories; on the other hand, as an intuition, as contained in every 
empirical presentation of the manifold, it is homogeneous with the 


212 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


phenomena of sense. Time has Duration, Succession, and Simul¬ 
taneity as its forms; and through modifications of these, it schema¬ 
tizes all the a priori Concepts of the Understanding. 

Thus, the pure Schema of Quantity, the first Table of the Cate¬ 
gories, is Number , which is a mere form of Succession, created by 
the continuous addition to each other in Time of successive units, 
thus serving to determine the quantum — how much — of all ob¬ 
jects presented either in Space or Time. The manner in which 
the mind adds the successive moments, so as to constitute a definite 
portion of Time, say, an hour , schematizes the way in which it 
groups together the units of intuition presented in those moments 
into a conceivable whole. The a priori fundamental principle 
of this schematization is enounced by Kant as the “ Axiom of In¬ 
tuition,” namely, “ All Intuitions are extensive Magnitudes.” Such 
magnitudes are all the objects of Geometry and Arithmetic, these 
having to do only with pure Quantity, without any reference to 
Quality. “Every thing intuited is extensive;” hence it is divis¬ 
ible, and divisible ad infinitum. Nothing indivisible can be per¬ 
ceived. In other words, atoms can never be phenomena, never 
can be objects of possible experience. 

On the other hand, Quality, the second Table of the Categories, 
indicates the diversity of sensations, each of which has its own de¬ 
gree, reality or affirmation signifying being or existence in Time, 
while unreality or non-existence is the sensation reduced through 
successive stages of faintness to zero or nothing. Evidently the 
difference of the two is the difference between Time filled or occu¬ 
pied with sensation, and Time empty. 

The fundamental principle of the Categories in this Table is the 
“ Anticipation of Perception,” that “ in all phenomena, the Real, 
which is an object of sensation, has intensive quality, or is capable 
of degrees.” The number of degrees is infinite, as the sensation 
may be gradually diminished to any tenuity, but can never be¬ 
come absolutely null, without ceasing to be a sensation. Hence 
the rule, that there cannot be either an empty Time or an -empty 
Space, though we arbitrarily assume any very low degree of it to 
be nothing, and then designate it negatively as Unreality or Non¬ 
existence. Thus, the warmth of the room may be gradually di¬ 
minished, till we say it is not warm at all; it is cold. The weight 
of a given volume of atmospheric air may be gradually reduced, as 
in the receiver of an air-pump, till we call it nothing. But every 
one knows an absolute vacuum to be impossible. This is the 
meaning of Leibnitz’s law of Continuity. 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


213 


These two tables are called by Kant mathematical , since the 
Categories contained in them are the ground of mathematical 
mensuration of all objects having quantity, either of space and 
time, and quality, or degrees of sensation. Their fundamental 
principles are said to be constitutive , because they suffice to con¬ 
stitute objects of perception as having a given quantity and a 
determinate quality. The other two Tables of Categories are 
called dynamical; as they regulate our notions of force, action, 
and the grounds of difference between possible, actual, and neces¬ 
sary results of the combination of mechanical causes, they are 
the metaphysical basis of the science of pure Physics, especially of 
that department of this science which we call Mechanics. Their 
fundamental principles are not constitutive, but merely regulative, 
since they only give us rules for determining the relations of one 
object to other objects previously constituted. 

There are three of these regulative principles, called “ Analogies 
of Experience,” for the third Table of Categories, that of Relation. 
The Schema of the first of these is the perdurability, the un¬ 
changeableness, of Time itself, as contrasted with the constant flux 
of phenomena, the incessant changes of things, which take place in 
Time. Time changes not, and produces no change. Time does 
not crumble man’s works to dust, wear away even the mountain’s 
side, change our hair to gray, dry up our affections, but only causes 
and agencies which are at work in Time; such as meteoric forces, 
the attrition of falling water, chemical or mechanical solutions of 
continuity and complexity, human passions or sloth. Evidently 
we have here the Category of Substance, as the permanent and 
unchangeable, underlying all the phenomenal mutations of its at¬ 
tributes or qualities. This first Analogy, enounced as a fundamen¬ 
tal principle, is thus expressed: “ In all changes of phenomena, 
substance is permanent, and the quantum thereof in nature is nei¬ 
ther increased nor diminished.” Amid all changes, whether me¬ 
chanical or chemical, say our physicists, not an atom of matter is 
annihilated, not one new atom is created. Nihil gigni, nihil in 
nihilum revertere potest. 

But how do the physicists prove this dictum by their favorite 
method of observation and experiment, instead of referring it, as is 
here done, to an a priori principle ? Mere inductive science 
here utterly fails to establish its point. Unless we assume this law 
beforehand, no chemical or physical investigation by experiment is 
possible; and therefore the law itself is unprovable, since the only 
possible proof of it would be by experiment. For instance: we 




214 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

could not prove by experiment that certain alkalies are metallic 
oxides, if we did not previously assume that the substance of the 
alkali could not possibly be annihilated in the course of the ex¬ 
periment, and the two new substances, oxygen and a metal, be 
created at the same time to take its place. The accidents change, 
but the substance persists. Hence, various material substances 
differ from each other, not in their substance,— every atom of which 
is conceived to be perfectly like every other atom, — but in their ac¬ 
cidents or qualities. For example : it is the same substance which 
is — now, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen ; now, these united in 
vegetable tissue ; now, after being eaten and assimilated, animal 
tissue; and finally, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen again. Mere 
experience, uninformed by the a priori laws of the Understanding, 
could only lead us to the conclusion, that, at each of these changes, 
the previous substance was annihilated, and the new one created. 
Yet we instinctively and instantly reject this conclusion. Why ? 
The chemist says, because we find by experiment that one of the 
accidents, namely, the aggregate weight, remains unchanged. Be it 
so; what then ? This would only prove, that whatever number or 
amount perishes, the same amount of substance is created anew, 
not necessarily that the same numerical or identical essence per¬ 
sists or endures. Besides, why infer identity from the one acci¬ 
dent, weight, which persists in amount , rather than difference from 
the many others, volume, color, texture, consistency, chemical affin¬ 
ities, etc., which undergo great change ? As all scientific investi¬ 
gation proceeds by analysis and synthesis, and so depends on this 
law, I say inductive science is impossible, except through the pre¬ 
vious assumption of an a priori principle, which, far from being 
founded on facts, appears directly to contradict facts. 

This general doctrine of the “ Critical Philosophy,” there¬ 
fore, seems to me to rest on an impregnable basis. But 1 would 
refer it to a different analogy from that to which Kant traces 
it. Instead of attributing it to the persistency of time itself, 
which endures, while phenomena in time change, I think it de¬ 
pends rather on the original fact of apperception, — that is, on 
the instinctive and necessary recognition, in pure consciousness, of 
the continuous identity, the unchangeableness, of myself, under all 
the phenomenal changes of thought, feeling, and outward manifes¬ 
tation. Infancy, manhood, and old age are but different stages in 
the existence of one and the same being, whose unity and continu¬ 
ity are attested by pure consciousness. The child is more than 
father of the man ; he is the man himself, his unfolding or devel- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


215 


opment from the one stage to the other being only a series of 
phenomenal and quasi outward changes, witnessed from within by 
the same persistent Ego, which really never changes or dies. 
Still farther: — we must have a persistent basis, before even the 
idea of change becomes possible, that is, before we can know what 
a changeable phenomenon is. For change, according to a law of 
thought that has been already explained, cannot be conceived or 
known except through its contrast with not-change ; just as mo¬ 
tion can be perceived only by comparison with that which is at 
rest. The flow of the river is ascertained only by reference to 
the immobility of its banks. The fleeting thoughts and other af¬ 
fections of my own mind would be nothing to me, if they did not 
flow past the fixed point of consciousness, the Ego that endures, 
the silent witness which beholds all change, but itself changes 
not. 

This is the proper place for considering the obscure passage, first 
inserted in the second edition of the “ Critique,” which Kant de¬ 
nominates a “ confutation of Idealism.” I am not sure that its 
meaning can be made clear, for the commentators generally make 
little mention of it, seeming to regard the argument which it con¬ 
tains as inconclusive or unintelligible. In order that the reader 
may judge for himself, I translate as literally as possible Kant’s 
own statement of the reasoning. 

“ Theorem. The mere consciousness, empirically determined, of 
my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside of 
me. 

“ Proof. I am conscious of my own existence as determined in 
Time. But all determination in Time presupposes something per¬ 
manent [or perdurable, etwas Beharrliches~\ in perception. But 
this permanent cannot be something in me, for only through this 
permanent can my own existence in Time be first determined. 
Therefore, the perception of this permanent is only possible through 
a thing outside of me, and not through the mere mental picture 
[ Vorstellung ] of such a thing. Consequently, the determination of 
my own existence in Time is possible only through the existence 
of real things which I perceive as external to myself. But con¬ 
sciousness in Time is necessarily connected with the consciousness 
of the possibility of this determination of Time ; therefore, it is 
' also necessarily connected with the existence of things outside of 
me, as a condition of the determination of Time ; that is, the con¬ 
sciousness of my own existence is, at the same time, an immediate 
consciousness of the existence of other things external to me.” 


216 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


This is enigmatical enough, though Kant boasts that the argu¬ 
ment here presented effectually turns the tables upon the Idealists ; 
for they assume, that the only immediate experience is internal, 
and from this, that we can proceed only by inference to external 
things. “ But it is here proved that external experience is prop¬ 
erly immediate, and only by its means does internal experience 
(that is, not indeed the consciousness of our own existence, but the 
consciousness of its determination in Time) become possible.” 

As the first step towards understanding this obscure argument, 
let us inquire what Kant means by our existence being “ determined 
in Time.” He means, that it is so determined only when a change 
takes place in the mode of its existence; for change cannot be 
cognized except by perceiving one state of a thing to be anterior 
to its subsequent state. To quote his own words, “ we can perceive 
a determination in Time only through a change in external rela¬ 
tions (movement) to the permanent in space ; for example, the 
movement of the sun in relation to fixed objects on the earth.” A 
consciousness unbroken by the occurrence of any change in its 
condition, as in a swoon, is insensible to the lapse of time, and, of 
course, cannot assign existence to any one moment during the 
swoon rather than to another. But I am conscious of my existence 
only as a constant succession of distinct mental states, i. e., as a 
series of changes ; aud I determine my existence in time, when I 
assign it to the moment when one of those changes took place, —• 
say, when I had a headache yesterday forenoon. Now, it has just 
been proved that change is only of the attributes of a thing, and 
can be cognized only through its contrast with the unchange¬ 
able, that is, with Substance, with what is permanent in per¬ 
ception. Hence, I can be conscious of my existence as deter¬ 
mined in time, or as a succession of changing states of conscious¬ 
ness, only through perceiving something which is perdurable and 
does not change. 

So far, the reasoning is sound. But then the question arises, 
what is this “ something permanent,” etwas Beharrliches, in per¬ 
ception ? Kant says, it cannot be “ something in me,” for only by 
its means can the existence of a “ me ” be determined in time. 
Then it must be something out of me ; that is, I can cognize my 
own existence only through an immediate consciousness of exter¬ 
nal substance. On the contrary, as has been said, I maintain that 
the something permanent is in me, and that the fleeting phases of 
my mind are recognized only as they drift past the fixed point of 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 217 

consciousness, the perdurable Self, which remains one and the same 
throughout. 

Seemingly not more than half satisfied with his own reasoning, 
Kant modifies it essentially in a foot-note. Here, he says, the 
question as to the possibility of an immediate consciousness of the 
existence of external things really stands thus: “ Have we an 
internal sense, but no external sense, only an external imagining ? 
But it is clear, that, in order only to imagine something as exter¬ 
nal, that is, to represent it to the sense in intuition, we must first 
have an external sense, and thereby be able immediately to distin¬ 
guish the mere receptivity of an external impression on our mind 
from the spontaneity which characterizes every imagination. For, 
merely to imagine an external sense would be to destroy the fac¬ 
ulty of perception itself, which [on this supposition] is to be con¬ 
structed by the power of imagination.” Here is the secret of 
Kant’s aversion to Idealism. At the outset, from the very begin¬ 
ning of the “ Critique,” he had assumed without proof, for indeed 
the assertion needs no proof, that the mind has originally a power 
of clearly distinguishing its mere receptivity from its spontaneity, 
its external from its internal states, and hence, of separating what 
comes to it from without from that which is created within. Pres¬ 
sure and counter-pressure, my own voluntary thrust and external 
resistance to that thrust, Myself acting and a Not-myself reacting, 
are both distinctly cognized by me in one and the same act of con¬ 
sciousness. In truth, either one of them cannot be known except 
through its contrast with the other. Herein, Dr. Reid and Kant 
and Sir W. Hamilton are at one, — in the doctrine of “ an im¬ 
mediate consciousness of the existence of external things,” those 
“ things,” however, being, not Matter, but Force. But whether 
this doctrine is consistent with other portions of Kant’s theory, or 
not, the reader may judge for himself. From this digression I 
now return to the exposition of Schematism. 

The Schema of Causality, the second Category in the table of 
Relation, is the fixed relation to each other of the successive mo¬ 
ments in the flow of Time. To express it roughly, nine o’clock in 
the morning can come only after eight o’clock, and only before ten 
o’clock. Any alteration of this order is inconceivable. And what 
is this but the causal relation, which is necessarily conceived by 
us as prius and posterius in a fixed order ? The Cause is that 
which necessarily precedes the Effect; the Effect is that which 
necessarily follows the Cause. Experience tells us nothiug either 
of the fixedness, or the necessity, of this order; for, to the ap- 


218 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


prehension of the senses, cause and effect are not successive at all, 
but simultaneous. And so far as experience goes, there is no ne¬ 
cessity in the case at all, but only a frequent conjunction of two 
events, which, though witnessed a thousand times, may be dissolved 
the next time that one appears. The parts of any other manifold, 
argues Kant, of a house, for instance, may be apprehended in any 
order, from top to bottom, or from bottom to top, from right to left, 
or vice versa. But if A is apprehended as Cause, and B as Ef¬ 
fect, the order is always AB, never BA. How do the Empiricists 
account for this, whose oft repeated maxim, that Causation is 
nothing but the constant conjunction of two events, leaves us en¬ 
tirely at a loss whether the physical phenomenon causes the psychi¬ 
cal, or the psychical causes the physical; whether the paleness 
produces the fear, or the fear the paleness; whether the volition 
raises the arm, or the raising of the arm excites the volition ? 
But even a Positivist will admit, that every instant of Time is 
conditioned by all the preceding instants, so that it cannot change 
places with any one of them ; and also, that our conception, how¬ 
ever it may be with our observation, necessarily presents Cause 
and Effect in the same unchangeable order. The principle of this 
schematization, though hardly necessary to be enounced, is, “ that 
all changes take place according to the law of the connection be¬ 
tween Cause and Effect.” And here we have another proof of 
Leibnitz’s law of Continuity; that, as the succession of Time is 
one of unbroken continuity, proceeding uninterruptedly, by steps 
infinitesimally small, up to any given amount, say, an hour, so the 
change induced by any Cause, since it is conceived through this 
succession of Time, is also necessarily conceived as continuous or 
without break. This is usually expressed as the law, nihil Jit per 
saltum ; Nature never acts by jerks. Even the cannon ball, when 
fired off, does not jump from a state of rest to one of high velocity, 
but passes, though very quickly, through all the intermediate de¬ 
grees of motion, even the slowest. Certainly experience cannot 
avouch this fact, since the successive changes are altogether too 
quick to be perceived by sense. 

The Schema of the third Category in the Table of Relation is 
that of simultaneity in Time ; just as duration was that of Sub¬ 
stance, and succession that of Cause, these being the only three 
conceivable Modes of Time. The principle of this Schema of 
simultaneity is, that “ all substances, so far as they exist in space 
at the same time, reciprocally act on, and mutually determine, each 
other.” For, the objects A and B, if coexistent, may be per- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. 


219 


eeived indifferently, either in the order AB, or in the order BA; 
that is, A no more determines B than B determines A. They re¬ 
ciprocally determine each other. Because the earth and the moon 
are coexistent, the moon attracts the earth just as much as the earth 
attracts the moon. Conceived as coexistent, every substance in the 
universe acts on every other substance, and every other substance 
acts on it. This is only the law of gravity. Only pure reason can 
establish this law ; since we have experience, through direct obser¬ 
vation, only that the equilibrium or statical condition exists ; but not 
what balance of forces produces this equilibrium, since force cannot 
be observed at all. 

Having said enough to explain Kant’s theory of Schematization, 
I must pass very rapidly over its application to the three Catego¬ 
ries of the fourth Table. These do not determine the object, but 
only the nature of my cognition of the object. For, supposing the 
object to. be already fully determined, I may still ask myself 
whether I know it as only a possible object, or as a real existence, 
or, if real, whether it is also necessary. The three fundamental 
principles for this Table, called by Kant the three “ Postulates of 
Empirical Thought,” may be thus expressed : — 

1. Whatever can be conceived as an object capable of being in¬ 
tuited at any time is possible. 

2. That of which we have a sensation at some determinate time 
is real. 

3. That real existence which is conceived as belonging equally 
to all time is necessary. 

And here I end this sketch, which probably has been too much 
protracted for the reader’s patience, of Kant’s system of Transcen¬ 
dental Logic ; that is, of his exposition and justification of the a 
priori activities of mere Thought, and his determination of the 
precise limits within which alone this faculty can be legitimately 
exercised. Imperfect as my analysis of the theory is, it is proba¬ 
bly enough to show, that whatever difficulties stand in the way of a 
full and distinct understanding of it, — difficulties which arise from 
his lumbering and obscure style, his barbarous and intricate termi¬ 
nology, his endless repetitions, and his meagre use of illustrative 
examples from familiar facts, — still the system can be made intel¬ 
ligible both as a whole, and in all its parts; and therefore, that 
Kant always perfectly understood himself, however incapable he 
was of making himself understood by others. This Transcenden¬ 
tal Logic is the most obscure, but certainly the most original and 
characteristic, portion of the whole “ Critique.” I think, also, that 


220 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


most persons will agree with me in regarding it as a marvel of in¬ 
genious and profound speculation, a storehouse of striking and im¬ 
portant truths affecting the philosophy of mind and the logic of the, 
sciences, and a triumphant refutation of the doctrines of material¬ 
ism and sensualism. But it must be added on the other hand, 
that the system is needlessly intricate, operose, and abstruse, and, I 
had almost said, absurdly technical and systematic. 


CHAPTER XHL 


Kant’s u Critique ” continued. Transcendental Dialectic. 

It will be remembered that Kant’s general problem, “ how 
synthetical judgments a priori are possible,” was divided into three 
particular problems ; namely, (1.) how are pure Mathematics pos¬ 
sible ? — since this science is wholly synthetical and a priori. 
(2.) How is pure Physical science possible ? — that is, how can we, 
independently of experience, establish any fundamental truths in 
physics ? as we do, when we affirm that Substance is unchangeable 
or perdurable, and can never be increased or diminished; and that 
every physical phenomenon must be determinable both quantitatively 
and qualitatively. (3.) How are pure Metaphysics possible ? — that 
is, how can we, independently of experience, know anything about 
pure or real being, as distinguished from phenomenal being, that is, 
again, about hyperphysical, supersensuous, or metaphysical objects ? 

The first of these problems, about pure Mathematics, was solved, 
it will be remembered, in the doctrine of Transcendental ^Esthetic. 
The second, about pure Physics, has now been solved in the ana¬ 
lytical part of Transcendental Logic, by showing that experience is 
impossible, until we have first constructed the objects of experience 
through applying the Categories to the manifold of intuition; and 
that this necessary application of the Categories, through the 
schemata of Time, gives us certain fundamental truths or rules, 
which are precisely what we wanted, namely, the fundamental a 
priori principles of all physical science. We are now to attempt 
the third problem, about pure Metaphysics, in the second part of 
the Transcendental Logic, namely, Transcendental Dialectic. And 
I may as well say beforehand, that the conclusion at which Kant 
here arrives is, that pure Metaphysics are impossible, that there 
is no such science as Ontology, or a doctrine of pure being, the 
whole which has hitherto received that name being only delusion, 
unfounded assumption, and error. 

This remaining portion of the Critical Philosophy I must pass 
over hurriedly, though it contains many of Kant’s peculiar and most 


222 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


characteristic doctrines. Strictly speaking, we have thus far con¬ 
sidered but one portion of the Logic of Thought, namely, the 
Transcendental Analytic; and we have yet to treat of what Kant 
calls Transcendental Dialectic, which is an exposure of the soph¬ 
isms and fallacies into which the human mind inevitably falls 
when it endeavors, as pure Reason is constantly urging it to do, to 
push its researches up to unity and the unconditioned, by applying 
its principles and Categories hyperphysically, or beyond the bounds 
of experience. Kant makes a wide difference between the tran¬ 
scendental, or what goes before experience, and is presupposed by it 
as its necessary condition, and the transcendent , or that which lies 
wholly beyond the limits of experience. The latter, he maintains, 
is only a fruitful source of illusions and sophistry, urging us to 
constantly repeated, but hopeless, endeavors to reach the absolute 
and unconditioned. The bird, he says, feeling the resistance of 
the air to the motion of its wings, might fancy that it could fly 
better if this impediment were removed. But in a vacuum, it 
would drop helpless, and would thus find that the fancied obstacle 
really furnished the necessary support for its limited flight. It is 
quite characteristic of Kant to endow the human mind with a 
distinct faculty, the Reason properly so called, the highest and 
most far reaching of all its faculties, for the express and sole pur¬ 
pose of seeking the unattainable, of flying without air, of out¬ 
stripping one’s own shadow. As Hamilton remarks, Kant’s “ Rea¬ 
son ” is only the Understanding which has overleaped itself; his 
“ Idea,” the product of Reason, is nothing but the Concept, the 
product of the Understanding, sublimated into the inconceivable. 

But let us hear the master’s own explication of his theory. 
Pure Logic is to be our guide in Transcendental Dialectic, as it 
was in the Analytic of the pure Understanding. It has already 
been explained, that the only proper function of pure or formal 
Logic is, to make an analysis of the work of the Understanding or 
thinking faculty, in order to ascertain what are the Forms and 
necessary Laws under which we always have thought, and not to 
point out new processes or methods of thinking, or any improve- , 
ment of old ones, whereby we may more surely attain new truths, 
and thus either increase or fortify our knowledge. When thus 
limited in its endeavor, Logic is properly called mere “ Analytic,”— 
and it expressly disclaims any intention to become an organon for 
the advancement, either of any particular science or of human 
knowledge in general. But in ancient and mediaeval times, and 
especially by the sophists, the skeptics, and the Scholastics, Logic 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


223 


was erroneously held to be an art, and not a science. They culti¬ 
vated it with great diligence as the art of Dialectics, and declared 
that its special function was to promote science and aid in the con¬ 
futation of error. The fallacies and sophistries into which they 
were thus led justly discredited their art as a profitless logomachy, 
or war of words ; and the very name, Dialectics, became a term of 
reproach. 

In like manner, argues Kant, the only office of Transcendental 
Logic is the Analytic of the pure Understanding, in order to dis¬ 
cover its necessary and a priori Forms and Laws. But these are 
mere blanks and empty Forms, till they are filled up with the 
Matter of intuition, which can be derived only from experience. 
Every attempt to make a Transcendent use of them, by applying 
them in the region which lies beyond experience, as a means of 
attaining the Absolute and the Unconditioned, must be illusory and 
vain. Transcendental Dialectic is an exposure of the fallacies thus 
committed, a demonstration of the hopelessness of the endeavor to 
go beyond the bounds of sense, to realize pure Ideas, and thus to 
found a science of noumena or pure being. 

Kant begins his discussion of the subject by remarking, that we 
have now travelled through the land of the pure Understanding, 
carefully surveyed and measured all its parts, and assigned to every 
thing therein contained its proper place. “ But this land,” he says, 
“ is an island, surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the proper 
seat of illusion, where many a cloud-bank and rapidly melting ice¬ 
field deceives the mariner with a vain show of lands now first dis¬ 
covered, and, while thus feeding him with empty hopes, involves 
him in adventures which he can never abandon, and yet can never 
bring to a successful end. Before we embark upon this sea, in 
order to explore its entire length and breadth, so as to be sure 
whether there is any discovery there to be hoped for, it will be 
well first to glance at a map of the land which we are leaving, and 
to ask ourselves, whether we may not, after all, rest satisfied with 
what is contained in it, even if no other region should be discovered 
upon which we can build a home. We have seen, that every 
thing which the pure Understanding derives a priori from its own 
stores still exists solely in behoof, and for the use, of experience. 
The Categories, and the a priori principles of pure Physics which 
are founded upon them, contain, as it were, only the pure Schema 
of possible experience.” Then, why seek to go farther ? Why 
not be content with the knowledge of phenomena, of things as they 
appear ? especially, since the judgments thus formed have at least 


224 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


“empirical reality,” or what Kant calls “objective validity,” since 
they are necessarily true, not only for you and me, but for every 
human mind. As for noumena, or things as they really are, per se, 
why not let them alone ? 

Because, answers Kant, there is one thing which the Under¬ 
standing that is occupied solely with phenomena cannot do ; it 
cannot determine the limits of its own use, so as to distinguish 
clearly what is within its proper sphere, from that which lies out¬ 
side of it and beyond its reach. He endeavors to establish these 
limits, through his doctrine, that an abstract conception does not 
increase our knowledge, if it be not made sensuous , that is, if it be 
not filled up, and made concrete, by the intuitions of sense; other¬ 
wise, he says, with a near approach to a pun, the concept is with¬ 
out sense, that is, without meaning. If a noumenon, he argues, is 
defined as that which is “ not an object of sensuous perception,” 
the definition is merely negative, and adds nothing to our knowl¬ 
edge. If it is defined positively, as “ the object of a non-sensu- 
ous intuition,” he declares that we have no such intuition. But 
herein he begs the question, by making it depend on the truth of 
his unfounded assumption, that consciousness is nothing but an in¬ 
ternal sense. We assert, that the pure Ego of apperception, which 
is one and the same throughout all our mental acts, is an imme¬ 
diate intuition of consciousness, a faculty the testimony of which 
cannot be doubted, since the doubt, as Descartes proved, would 
annihilate itself; and Self, thus immediately apprehended per se, 
and not merely inferred from certain phenomena, is a veritable 
noumenon. We are conscious of the Thinker in one and the same 
act whereby we are conscious of the Thought; just as we cannot 
perceive motion without also perceiving the thing moved. Gogito , 
scilicet sum. 

“ All knowledge,” says Kant, “ begins with Sense, proceeds to 
Understanding, and ends with Reason,” the last aiming to reach 
the highest unity of thought, which is the Unconditioned. The 
Understanding, as the faculty of rules and of immediate conclu¬ 
sions, i. e., of inferring one Judgment directly from another, without 
the intervention of a third, or of uniting the Subject with a Pred¬ 
icate immediately, Jiot employing a middle term ; — the Under¬ 
standing, I Sify, thus employed, can give us only a relative unity, 
a relative whole, a conditioned truth. The inferred judgment is 
true only on condition of the truth of that other judgment from 
which it was inferred ; and this predecessor again has but a condi¬ 
tional validity, depending on the truth of that from which it was 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


225 




derived ; and so on, indefinitely. We seek an unconditioned judg¬ 
ment, not resting on any premise, and therefore true in itself, true 
absolutely. In like manner, the whole which the Understanding 
forms, by grasping together the manifold of intuition into an ob¬ 
ject, and individuals into a class, is hut a relative whole , which is 
then placed under a genus, and this subsumed under successively 
higher genera, an absolute' summum genus being thus the limit 
and aim of the process, but a limit which we can never reach. 
The unity , also, which is formed through the Categories out of the 
data furnished by experience, must be only relative , being condi¬ 
tioned by the union of its parts ; for, as it exists in Space and 
Time, each of which is divisible without end, the indivisible can 
exist only in conception, never in reality. 

“ By Idea,” says Kant, “ I understand a necessary conception of 
the Reason, for which no corresponding object is presented by the 
Sense. Accordingly, the pure conceptions of Reason, which we are 
now considering, are Transcendental Ideas. They are conceptions 
of pure Reason, for they regard all empirical knowledge as deter¬ 
mined by an absolute totality of its conditions,” or as traced back 
through the whole series of its conditions, till we reach its absolute 
cause, or absolute unit, or absolute whole. The conception of an 
atom , for instance, requires us to carry back the division and subdi¬ 
vision to infinity, in order to reach the absolute unit which cannot 
be divided ; and the existence of this ultimate unit is said to be the 
necessary prerequisite or condition of the whole series, since, other¬ 
wise, there would be an aggregate or multiple not consisting of units, 
which is a contradiction. These Transcendental Ideas, continues 
Kant, “ are not mere fictions arbitrarily thought out, but are pre¬ 
sented by the nature of Reason itself, and therefore necessarily re¬ 
late to the whole ground for the use of the Understanding. Finally, 
they are also transcendent, and go beyond the limits of all experi¬ 
ence, in which, consequently, an object can never be found which 
is an adequate presentation of a Transcendental Idea.” “ Hence,” 
he adds, “we cannot affirm of Wisdom in a disparaging way, that 
it is only an Idea? 

Kant proceeds to justify this use of the word Idea by the au¬ 
thority of the great philosopher of ancient times. Plato, he says, 
shows that he meant by it, “ not only something which is never 
derived from the Sense, but which goes far beyond the concep¬ 
tions of the Understanding, to which Aristotle restricted himself. 
Nothing which is accordant with it can be found in experience. 
Ideas are, for Plato, the primitive images or archetypes of things 
15 


226 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


themselves, and not mere keys to possible experience, like the Cate¬ 
gories. In his opinion, they proceed from the highest Reason, by 
which they are imparted to human thought, though now no longer 
found there in their original state, but are sadly obscured, so that 
they can only be recalled with effort through reminiscence, which 
is Philosophy.” “ Plato found his Ideas especially in all that con¬ 
cerns Morality, as this depends upon the Freedom of the Will, and 
this, again, upon cognitions which are a peculiar product of the 
Reason. He who would derive from experience the conception of 
virtue, who would make (as many have really done) what can serve, 
at best, only as an imperfect illustrative example, to be the pattern 
of our Idea of what is moral, would convert virtue into a nonentity, 
or an ambiguous thing, not subject to rule, and changeable accord¬ 
ing to time and circumstance. That a man can never make his 
conduct conform perfectly to the pure Idea of virtue, does not prove 
this Idea to be something merely chimerical. For as regards na¬ 
ture, experience gives us rules, and is the source of truth; but in 
regard to the moral law, experience, alas') is the mother of illusion, 
and it is extremely reprehensible to derive the laws about what I 
ought to do from what is done, or even to limit them by this con¬ 
sideration.” It is on the authority, then, of the great Athenian 
philosopher, that Kant establishes his distinction between the merely 
regulative use of the Ideas of pure Reason, and the constitutive 
employment of them in dogmatical affirmations about what lies be¬ 
yond the bounds of experience. Ideas are presented to us as ends 
which are to be striven after, but not as objects of possible accom¬ 
plishment. 

All this is plain enough. But Kant is not satisfied till he can 
show how the Transcendental Ideas of the Reason, which are only 
the Infinite and the Absolute regarded as forms of the Uncondi¬ 
tioned, are derived from just such analysis of the forms of logic as 
produced the Categories. As Reason is the faculty of principles, 
aiming always at the highest principle, its function is that of medi¬ 
ate conclusion, or reasoning , the only form of which is Syllogism, 
whereby, through the intervention of a third or middle term, we 
reduce the two premises to a single conclusion. This is a u nif ying 
process, perfectly similar to that whereby Judgment unites its two 
terms, the Subject and the Predicate, into a single Concept. As 
the Forms of Judgment produced the Categories, so we may expect 
the Forms of Syllogism will originate those pure conceptions of 
Reason, which are called Transcendental Ideas. There are but 
three of these latter Forms, all comprised under the head of Rela- 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


227 


tion; they are the Categorical, the Hypothetical, and the Disjunc¬ 
tive Syllogism. Carrying on each of these through prosyllogisms, 
or antecedent reasoning, the validity of each stage in the-process 
being conditioned on the validity of the one next above it in the 
scale, we thus approximate: First, the unconditioned of the Cate¬ 
gorical synthesis in a subject, t. e., an unconditioned Subject, which 
cannot become a Predicate. This is Self, the indivisible Ego of 
consciousness, which can be Subject to any Predicate, but can never 
be Predicate to any Subject. In other words, it is thought as 
absolute substance, or being per se, not per aliud. Secondly, the 
Unconditioned of the Hypothetical synthesis in a series, or a 
Cause which cannot become an Effect; i. e., a hypothesis than which 
there is none higher and broader, and which therefore includes the 
World, or universe of phenomena. Thirdly, the Unconditioned of 
the Disjunctive synthesis of parts in a system, or a Whole which 
cannot become a Part; i. e., an aggregate of all the members in a 
complete division, which must embrace not only all actual, but all 
possible, existence, and is therefore ens realissimum, the aggregate 
of all existence, God. These, then, are the three Forms of the Un¬ 
conditioned, the three Transcendental Ideas of Pure Reason: 1, the 
absolute unity of the thinking Subject, or the human soul, the indi¬ 
visible Ego of Consciousness; 2, the absolute totality of phenome¬ 
nal existence, or the Universe; 3, the foundation and reality of 
all actual and possible existence, God. Hence the three sciences, 
which Pure Reason strives, though vainly, to establish, — rational 
Psychology, rational Cosmology, and rational Theology. Accord¬ 
ing to Kant, only an empirical science can be established under 
either of these heads; for in each case, that which assumes to be 
based on a priori principles is mere illusion and sophistry. 

We may give another, and perhaps more intelligible, account of 
this genesis of the three Transcendental Ideas. Since all Condi¬ 
tioned existence, as its very name implies, depends ultimately on 
the Unconditioned, whenever Conditioned existence is given, infer¬ 
ence is permissible from it towards the Unconditioned as an end or 
aim, which is never to be reached, but always to be striven after. 
In proportion as we strive after it, our knowledge is carried up 
higher towards unity. Now, Conditioned existence, i. e., existence 
depending on something else foreign to itself, is given in three dif¬ 
ferent ways : 1, as an internal phenomenon, something in us ; 2, as 
an external phenomenon, something out of us ; and 3, as possible 
existence in general, whether real or conceived. Then we must 
reason in a threefold manner: First, up to the Unconditioned in us, 


228 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the Subjective Unconditioned, which lies at the ground of all inter¬ 
nal phenomena, i. e., the Soul, the Ego; secondly, up to the Uncon¬ 
ditioned out of us, the Objective Unconditioned, or complete Object, 
Nature as a whole, or the World-Universe. It is obvious that the 
World in its largest sense, or the Universe, must be Unconditioned, 
since it comprises every thing in itself, and therefore can have no 
condition out of or beyond itself. And thirdly, -to the Uncondi¬ 
tioned in respect to all possible existence, the absolutely Uncondi¬ 
tioned, the sum of all possible realities, God himself. 

The genesis of these three Transcendental Ideas from the three 
fundamental Forms of Syllogism is easily given. First, the Un¬ 
conditioned JEgo is thus derived from the Categorical Syllogism, of 
which this is the Form : — 

All M are B; 

But A is M; 

Then A is B. 

The Major Premise, as will be remembered, is the origin of the 
Category of Substance and Attribute. Here, the Conclusion, A is 
B, is not true unconditionally, but only on condition of the truth 
of the Major Premise, that “ all M are B; ” and M is not an un¬ 
conditioned Subject, i. e., a Substance, for in the Minor Premise, 
“ A is M,” M appears as a Predicate, i. e., as a mere Mark or At¬ 
tribute. Then let us try to prove that “ All M are B ” by a prosyl¬ 
logism, taking a still broader Concept, N, as the middle term. 

All N are B; 

But M is N; 

Then M is B. 

Here the same difficulty recurs. The conclusion is true only on 
condition of the truth of the Major Premise, in which N, though a 
broader Concept than its predecessor, M, is still not an uncondi¬ 
tioned Subject or Substance, since it appears in the Minor Premise 
as mere Predicate. 

And were we to continue this process indefinitely, always striving 
to prove the Conclusion by a prosyllogism, that is, by employing a 
higher and broader Middle Term, we could never reach the Subjec¬ 
tive Unconditioned, the Ego or Self, the only Subject which cannot 
become a Predicate. Hence, the Subjective Unconditioned appears 
as a limit or aim, which we are always striving after, but never can 
obtain or reach. The Idea of it is merely regulative, not constitu¬ 
tive. 

2. The Objective Unconditioned, or World-Universe, is thus de¬ 
rived from the Hypothetical Syllogism, the Major Premise of which, 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 229 

as will be remembered, is the origin of the Category of Cause and 
Effect. This is the Form : — 

If A is B, C is D; 

But A is B; 

Then C is D. 

Here, avowedly, the Conclusion is true only on the condition ex¬ 
pressed in the Major Premise, if A is B. And even this is not 
the Unconditioned Cause of C being D, for we have as yet no 
proof of the Minor Premise, that A is B. Let us try to prove it, 
then, by a prosyllogism, thus referring the immediate antecedent 
to a higher Cause. 

IfMisN, A isB; 

But M is N; 

Then A is B. 

Here we have the same difficulty. The Conclusion is not Uncon¬ 
ditioned or Ultimate Cause, but is conditioned on our proving M 
to be N, which requires a prosyllogism, and so on forever. We 
trace one conjunction of events to another, till we have exhausted 
all the phenomena of the physical universe ; still we do not, and 
cannot, find an Unconditioned Cause, i. e., one which is not it¬ 
self an effect of a preceding Cause. Then the absolute totality of 
events, constituting the whole history of the universe, is unattain¬ 
able. 

3. The Unconditioned in respect to all possible existence, that 
is, the absolutely Unconditioned, is derived from the Disjunctive 
Syllogism, which, in its Major Premise, expresses the Category of 
Reciprocity of Action. This is the Form: — 

A is either B or C; But A is not B; Then A is C. 

Here, the conclusion is valid only on condition that the B or C of 
the Major Premise is a complete Disjunction ; for if there were an 
unexpressed term, suppose D, then it would not follow, though A 
were not B, that it must be C. It might be neither; it might be 
precisely the term which was not expressed. And this difficulty 
would still exist, however many terms we might add ; for how can 
we exhaust in language the terms not only of all real, but of all 
possible existence ? To indicate the existence of an infinite and 
absolute God, beyond whose perfections nothing is conceivable, we 
must express an infinity of Worlds, each one of them being in¬ 
finite. 

And here we end this curious parallelism of Logic and Meta¬ 
physics, which is at once the most forbidding, the most difficult to 


230 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


be understood, and the most characteristic feature of the Critical 
Philosophy. All that remains, to complete Kant’s work, is to exam¬ 
ine the reasons which have actually been alleged to prove, (1.) the 
personality of the thinking Subject; (2.) the nature of the universe 
as a whole, whether it be limited or unlimited, caused or uncaused, 
substantial or phenomenal; and (3.) the existence of a God ; and 
to show that they are as baseless as, according to this a priori de¬ 
duction, they ought to be. We shall thus complete the demonstra¬ 
tion of the impossibility of ontological Metaphysics. 

First, we have the idea of a being, our own Ego or Self, which 
is the principle of all our actions, and the subject of all our knowl¬ 
edge, and to which, therefore, we attribute an existence out of and 
beyond our present sensuous existence, and conceive it as an ab¬ 
solutely simple, unchangeable, and immortal Substance. But this, 
Kant maintains, is an illusion, founded on a paralogism or invol¬ 
untary sophism, which converts a logical necessity of Thought into a 
real and independent Substance not perceptible by sense. Granted, 
that thought is impossible except under the Form, cogito , “I 
think.” Still, this is a mere conception, a blank Form of Thought, 
not intuited or perceived, and therefore having no Predicate or 
Mark whereby to distinguish it from any other existence. What 
am I ? I cannot cognize the Ego as an Object of Thought, that is, 
as a concrete existence, but only as a necessary Subject of Thought, 
or means of cognizing anything else. The Ego, being presupposed 
for any cognition whatsoever, would need another Ego in order to 
cognize itself; therefore, like the corporeal organ of vision, or 
bodily eye, as our only means of seeing anything, it cannot see 
itself. Take the Judgment, “ I think myself; ” Ego me cogito. 
Here, there are two things concerned : (1.) the “ Ego,” which is 
only a logical or judging Subject, the thinking Ego, without which 
this judgment, or any other judgment, would not be possible, and 
which is therefore a mere blank conception of the mind ; and, 
(2.) the “ me ” which is thought of, or the real object, about which 
we endeavor to think. If this “ me ” were a real existence, which 
it purports to be, it would be presented to us through some intui¬ 
tion of the external or internal sense; since thus alone can any 
actual existence be perceived. But it is not so presented and in¬ 
tuited ; and therefore it is a mere nonentity, a fiction of thought. 
The subjective condition of thought cannot be the positive cogni¬ 
tion of an object. In short, Kant’s argument against the substan¬ 
tial existence, or absolute character, of the “ Ego ” or Self, is a 
perfect parallel to his argument against the objective validity of 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


231 


Space and Time. Because an a priori intuition of Space is a nec¬ 
essary condition or prerequisite, without which I could not per¬ 
ceive any external object to be external, or any body to be body, 
therefore Space itself is only a subjective or mental intuition. 
Because it is necessary, it must be subjective or unreal ; for ne¬ 
cessity cannot be made known by experience, which, at the utmost, 
reaches only the customary or habitual. In like manner, because 
the “ Ego ” is a necessary prerequisite for thinking anything, it 
cannot be presented to me by experience, as an object which is 
thought; for then there would be nothing to think it, and it would 
also be contingent, instead of necessary. We cannot erect our sub¬ 
jective necessities into objective affirmations. We cannot hyposta- 
tize or incarnate blank conceptions. 

I presume any one, to whom this skeptical argument against his 
own existence was first presented, would put it down as a mere 
logical puzzle, though he might not be able to point out the source 
of the fallacy in it. In fact, Kant does not seem by this reasoning 
fully to have convinced himself; as if with an uneasy feeling, he 
recurs to the subject again and again, repeats himself even to weari¬ 
ness, and presents quite a different version of his argument in the 
later publication of the “ Critique ” from that which was given in 
the first edition. The mistake here, as I have already pointed out, 
arises from what is, in truth, a fundamental error in his system, 
that of degrading Consciousness into what he calls the internal 
sense, thereby placing it entirely on a level with the external senses, 
and thus in great part breaking down the distinction between im¬ 
mediate and mediate knowledge. Certainly, we know external ob¬ 
jects only through the impressions which they make upon our senses; 
and this, at best, is only mediate knowledge. In like manner, the 
substance of things external is only cognized or thought, — necessa¬ 
rily thought, indeed, — but not directly perceived, as that in which 
their attributes or qualities inhere ; this, at best, being but an in¬ 
ference. But the data of Consciousness are known, not through 
anything else, but in themselves , or immediately; and any doubt of 
this, their immediate, presentation would be suicidal; since this 
doubt would equally affect their presentation as necessary, and as in¬ 
ternal or subjective, and thereby would invalidate Kant’s own argu¬ 
ment. The distinction between necessary and contingent, between 
objective and subjective, even between Intuition and Thought, rests 
upon the same testimony of Consciousness, which affirms the dif¬ 
ference between that which is, and that which is not, present to 
my mental vision, — between the Ego and the Non-Ego, — between 


232 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


active and passive states of mind. All these distinctions must be 
accepted or rejected together, since they are not the results of ar¬ 
gument, but the bases on whifth argument is founded, or from which 
it proceeds. They are immediate data of Consciousness, which even 
skepticism must respect, if it be philosophical or reasoning skepti¬ 
cism, and not mere baseless and arbitrary affirmation or denial. I can¬ 
not recognize Thought to be Thought, and not Volition, if I do not 
recognize each as my Thought and my Volition. Now what is either 
Thought or Volition ? It is an action ,— something that I do or 
perform ; and its relation to the Ego, or Myself, is, not an inferred 
relation from an Attribute to an unknown Substance, but a relation 
immediately perceived between an action and an agent. An act 
cannot be perceived without perceiving the agent, any more than I 
can perceive motion without perceiving the thing moved. Granted, 
that the Ego or Self is not a conception, for it has no Marks or 
Attributes, and therefore no complexity of parts to be grasped to¬ 
gether. This is only saying that it is a direct and simple intuition, 
like that of the color red. It can be cognized, or thought, though 
not by plurality, yet by difference; for as we perceive red to be 
red, by distinguishing it from blue or yellow, so we perceive the 
Ego to be the Ego by distinguishing it from the non-Ego. In the 
Judgment, “ I think myself,” granted that the Ego, as thinking, is 
necessarily the Subject, and not the Object, of Thought; still it is 
an Object of Consciousness ; else the affirmation itself, as a whole, 
would not be possible. And the Judgment itself, “ Ego me cogito,” 
is an affirmation of Consciousness; what it affirms is, that the 
“ Ego ” as thinking, and the “ Me ” as thought, are not two, but one , 
— the indivisible Ego of Consciousness. As I have already re¬ 
marked, we could not know Time itself to be in a perpetual and 
uniform lapse, forever gliding onward with an equable motion, if 
we did not refer it to the only fixed point of Consciousness, the 
unchanging Ego. We could not perceive that the river was flow¬ 
ing past us, if we ourselves were not immovable. Kant himself 
Bays, that “ I am conscious of myself is a thought which contains a 
double Ego, namely, the Ego as Subject, and the ‘me’ as Object.” 
But he admits, that “ thereby a double personality is not meant, but 
only that the Ego who thinks and intuits is the person , while the 
‘ me ’ of the Object, like other objects outside of me, is the thing.” 
And he makes this further admission: “ How it comes about that 
I who think should be an object of intuition to myself, and thereby 
that I should be able to distinguish myself from myself, is some¬ 
thing which is absolutely incapable of explanation, although it is 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


233 


an incontestable fact. And it shows that the mind has a power, 
which is so superior to all the perceptions of mere Sense, that it is 
the groundwork of a human Understanding, and so effects a com¬ 
plete separation of man from any species of the brutes, since we 
have no reason to attribute to any one of them a capacity of say¬ 
ing ‘I ’ to itself.” Hence it has been wittily remarked, that if we 
could only suppose a pig saying to itself “ I am a pig,” it would, 
ipso facto, cease to be a pig. 

The second Form of the Unconditioned, or Transcendental Idea, 
is the Object out of us, conceived as an absolute totality, or all, and 
therefore as having nothing beyond itself by which it could be lim¬ 
ited or conditioned. This is the World-Universe, conceived both 
as an aggregate of coexisting parts occupying all Space, and as a 
series of successive events, or stages of existence, extending through 
all Time. The Idea of it as Unconditioned can be found ouly in 
the absolute totality of this series or aggregate. But when we 
attempt to form in thought a representation of this totality, we find 
ourselves involved in what Kant calls the Antinomy of Pure Rea¬ 
son, or Conflict of Transcendental Ideas, whereby the doctrine which 
we seek to establish, denominated the Thesis, and its opposite or 
contradictory doctrine, denominated the Antithesis, are both found 
to rest on demonstrative or incontrovertible arguments, leaving us 
utterly at a loss which to choose between them. Thus, we seek to 
prove, first, the Thesis, namely, that the world had a beginning in 
Time, and is also limited in regard to Space; and we succeed in 
doing so to our entire satisfaction. But then we are dismayed to 
find, that the Antithesis, or contradictory doctrine, that the world 
had no beginning in Time, and has no limits in Space, but is infi¬ 
nite in regard both to Time and Space, may also be perfectly made 
out by equally satisfactory arguments. Such a conflict, such a 
hopeless dilemma, is the inevitable result of seeking to push our 
knowledge beyond the limitations imposed by the very nature of 
the human mind, — that is, beyond the bounds of experience by 
actual perception. 

I will give a specimen of this fencing with contradictory argu¬ 
ments. The Thesis, that the World had a beginning in Time, is 
thus proved : If it had not a beginning, then, up to any given 
moment or date, an infinity of its successive states of existence 
must have already elapsed. But the very nature of an infinite 
series is, that it never can have elapsed, since the Infinite has no 
end. Then the World had a beginning. Q. E. D. But now take 
the Antithesis, that it had no beginning, and we prove it thus : As 


234 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


a beginning is an existence preceded by a time in which the thing 
did not exist, before the beginning of the world, there must have 
been an empty or void Time. But in a void Time, the origination 
of anything is impossible, inasmuch as there is nothing in it to de¬ 
termine whether the world should begin, or not. Then the World 
did not begin. Q. E. D. 

The second portion of this Thesis respecting Cosmological quan¬ 
tity, that the world is not infinite in extension, but has definite 
limits or boundaries in space, is thus demonstrated: “ If we as¬ 
sume the contradictory of the proposition to be true, then the 
world is an infinite given whole, or aggregate, of coexisting things. 
But the magnitude of a quantum, which is not given within certain 
limits of an intuition, cannot be thought in any other way than 
through the synthesis of its parts; and the whole of such a quan¬ 
tum must be such a synthesis completed by the repeated addition of 
unity to itself. Accordingly, in order to think as a whole the 
world which fills all space, we must consider the successive syn¬ 
thesis of the parts of an infinite whole as finished; that is, an infi¬ 
nite time must have elapsed in the enumeration of all coexisting 
things. But this is impossible. Then an infinite aggregate of real 
things cannot be considered as a given whole, or as existing simul¬ 
taneously.” Hence, as its contradictory is false, the Thesis must 
be true, that the world is not infinite in extension, but has definite 
limits in space. 

But in a perfectly similar fashion, the Antithesis may be also 
demonstrated. For here, too, let us assume the truth of the con¬ 
tradictory, namely, that the world is finite and limited in exten¬ 
sion ; then it exists in an empty space, which is not limited. Then 
there would be, not only a relation of things to each other in space , 
but also a relation of the things to space itself. But this relation 
to a void space would be a relation to no object; that is, it is no 
relation at all. Therefore, the world is not limited in space, but is 
infinite in extension. 

Thus far, I have given only the First Antinomy respecting the 
World-Universe; that which concerns its Quantity. But there 
are three other such Antinomies about it, corresponding to the 
three other Tables of the Categories, those of Quality, Relation, 
and Modality. It would only be fatiguing to go through them all, 
the reasoning is so similar. But I will give one more specimen, 
in the Third Antinomy. The Thesis is this : Causality according 
to physical law will not, alone, account for the origin of the uni¬ 
verse ; but there must be, united with it, a spontaneous or free-will 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


235 


causality. For, according to physical law, every event or stage of 
existence is the necessary consequence of some preceding event; 
and this event, again, necessarily results from its predecessor; and 
that, again, from a third ; and so on forever. Then the series of 
physical causes is infinite, and, of course, there was no original 
event, since every event had a predecessor. Then, physical causa¬ 
tion alone does not account for the beginning of things, but the 
whole series of physical events must be regarded as one free or 
unconditioned cause. In other words, there must have been some 
cause not physical, not necessitated by a predecessor; that is, a 
free-will cause. Q. E. D. But now hear the proof of the Antith¬ 
esis, that a free-will, or spontaneously self-originating, cause is im¬ 
possible. Every acting cause, before it acted, must have been in 
a state of inaction. And before the origin of the universe, i. e., be¬ 
fore anything existed, there was nothing to determine such a cause 
to act, rather than to remain in inaction. [But as by hypothesis 
it is spontaneous and free, it needs not to be determined to act; it 
determines itself.] Then a free-will cause will not account for the 
origin of the universe. Q. E. D. 

The point of the argument in the Thesis here is humorously 
illustrated by Coleridge. “A chain without a staple from which 
all the links derive their stability, or a series of Causes without a 
First, has been not inaptly allegorized as a string of blind men, 
each holding the skirt of the man before him, reaching far out of 
sight, but all moving without the least deviation in one straight 
line. It would be naturally taken for granted, that there was a 
seeing guide at the head of the file; but what if it were answered, 
‘ No, Sir; the men are without number, and infinite blindness sup¬ 
plies the place of sight.’ ” 

This reasoning may be stated in still another form, in which, 
perhaps, its cogency will be more apparent to the ordinary reader. 
If I wish to move an object which is not immediately within my 
reach, and therefore I push it with a stick, it is still true that I, 
and not the stick, am the Cause of its motion. Even if another 
intermediate means be employed, if, with a stick, I push a board on 
the farther end of which the object is lying, still I am the only 
Cause of that object’s motion, the stick and the board being merely 
my implements. And the same may be said, though the means em¬ 
ployed be ever so numerous; they are only means or implements, 
while I am the First and the sole Cause of the motion. Now, what 
are called Physical Causes, or Second Causes, are only such physi¬ 
cal means and implements; however long a chain of them be em- 


236 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ployed, they are mere sticks, boards, or stones. Not one of them 
has any self-originating power; it acts only so far as it is acted 
upon. Wholly incapable even of changing its own state, it cer¬ 
tainly cannot change the state of anything else. When the ques¬ 
tion is asked, what is the Cause of this phenomenon, of this change 
of state, which is now taking place before our eyes, we make no 
progress whatever toward answering it, by pointing out some other 
physical phenomenon as its invariable antecedent. Such an ante¬ 
cedent has not even the power which belongs to every one of 
Coleridge’s blind men ; it cannot, of its own accord , either move or 
push. Consequently, we need a First Cause, i. e., one acting spon¬ 
taneously and with free-will, not merely at the head of a file which 
extends backward indefinitely, but whenever and wherever motion 
or change is produced. Professor Tyndall’s “ Matter,” in which 
he discerns “ the promise and the potency of every form of life,” 
is a mere stick in the hands of an agent. Not the brickbat, but 
he who threw the brickbat, caused the man’s death. 

The futility of the questions which are considered in the An¬ 
tinomies is pointed out by Kant in still another manner. He 
says, we should be more willing to let such questions alone, if we 
could see beforehand that the answers to them, whichever way they 
might turn, would only augment the obscurity of the subject, and 
rescue the mind from one perplexity by involving it in another. 
This is actually the case with all those attempts to form a concep¬ 
tion of the Kosmos as an infinite whole, which inevitably involve 
the mind in Antinomies. We may be sure beforehand that, which¬ 
ever side of the question respecting the Unconditioned is favored 
by the endeavor to synthesize the whole series of the Conditioned, 
the result will be either too small , or too great , to be intelligently 
grasped by the Understanding. 

First, if the world had no beginning, it is too great for our con¬ 
ception ; for an attempt to trace the series backward can never 
overtake the whole eternity which has elapsed. And if we sup¬ 
pose it did have a beginning, then it is too small for our thought; 
since, as a beginning presupposes a time which antedated it, it 
cannot be unconditioned, and we must look higher for a time-con¬ 
dition on which it depends. In like manner, if the world is infinite 
and unlimited in Space, it is too great for any possible conception 
which begins with experience. Is it finite and limited ? Then you 
have a right to ask what determines those limits. Since no one 
can have an experience of what is absolutely void, empty space 
cannot be a correlative of things, or a condition which forms a 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 237 

part of possible experience. Accordingly, a limited world is too 
small for our conception. 

For another instance, take the case of the fourth Antinomy. If 
you assume an absolutely necessary existence, — whether it be the 
world, or something in the world, or the Cause of the world, — then 
you must assign to it a time which is infinitely remote from any 
given moment of time. Then such an existence is inaccessible, be¬ 
cause it is too great for our finite thought. But if your opinion is, 
that every thing which belongs to the world is contingent, then 
every given existence is too small for our conception; for to be 
contingent is to depend on some other existence lying behind it. 

In all these cases, we have said that the cosmological Idea is 
either too great, or too small, for any intelligent conception by the 
Understanding. But why should we not say just the reverse, and 
throw the blame on the Understanding rather than the Reason, by 
affirming the Conception to be too small, or too large, for the Idea? 
Because, answers Kant, it is only experience which can give reality 
to our concepts, and therefore a possible empirical conception must 
be the standard, whereby we judge whether an Idea is a mere ens 
rationis, a fiction of thought, or whether it relates to an object in 
the world. If we say a thing is too large or too small for another 
thing, the former is regarded as existing for the sake of the latter, 
and therefore needing to be adapted to it. One of the trivial ques¬ 
tions in the old schools of dialectics was this: If a ball cannot pass 
through a hole, shall we say that the ball is too large, or the hole 
too small ? In this case, it matters not which expression we em¬ 
ploy, for we do not know which exists for the sake of the other. 
On the other hand, we certainly should not say, the man is too 
long for his trousers, but the trousers are too short for the man. 

Most of these Antinomies are perfectly well founded, and they 
are stated by Kant with great force and clearness. They are sim¬ 
ply the inextricable difficulties in which the human mind, as finite , 
finds itself involved whenever it seeks to grasp the idea of the Infi¬ 
nite, or endeavors to reason either from, or up to, the Infinite. 
But Kant does only half his work. He constructs the labyrinth, 
and shows the impossibility of finding our way out of it. But he 
does not show, what is obvious after a little reflection, that there 
is no necessity of putting ourselves into the labyrinth at all; that 
we may pass it by on the other side with impunity and indifference, 
as an insoluble problem with which we have nothing to do. When 
we keep within the proper range of our faculties, we know all that 
it concerns us to know, without troubling ourselves with what lies 


238 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


beyond. To say that man cannot grasp the Infinite, is simply to 
say, that Man is not God. To escape the whole puzzle, we need 
only remember that Philosophy of the Conditioned, which has been 
already reviewed, as first taught by Pascal, and repeated after him 
by Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel. Nothing can be more 
true than this, for it is the highest law of human thought, that of 
two contradictory propositions, one must be true. Either Space has 
a limit, or it is unlimited. Time is either finite, or it is infinite. 
Either the world did begin to be, or it has existed forever. No 
person in his senses, whether a German Transcendentalist or a 
Positivist of our own day, would deny that one of each of these 
alternatives is incontrovertibly certain. Then, what is the conse¬ 
quence of proving, as we can very well do, that both branches of 
each alternative are alike inconceivable, — that is, cannot be grasped 
in human thought? Simply this: that the limits of our thought 
are not the boundaries of existence; that the inconceivable is not 
therefore the impossible; and that we logically may — nay, that we 
must — accept some truths that we cannot fathom. Faith rightly 
comes to supplement knowledge, when knowledge herself confesses 
that her own resources are exhausted, and that such aid is indis¬ 
pensable. 

The third Form of the Unconditioned is that of the sum of all 
realities and of all possibilities, the absolutely perfect, the source 
of all existence, and therefore Himself necessarily existent; — iu 
one word, God. This Form of the Unconditioned is not an Idea 
in the abstract, but an Idea in concrete, or an individual Being, 
— therefore denominated by Kant an Ideal. Thus, virtue, in the 
abstract, is an Idea; but the perfectly virtuous man, such as is 
presented in the conception of the Stoics for imitation, is an Ideal. 

As the Idea provides a rule, so the Ideal serves as an archetype 
for the perfect determination of the copy or ectype. Thus, the 
conduct of this supposed perfectly virtuous man serves us as a 
standard of action, with which we may compare and judge our¬ 
selves, and so it may help us to reform ourselves, although we can 
never obtain the perfection which it demands. “ Be ye therefore 
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Here, 
the Unconditioned, because complete or perfect, must comprise all 
possible predicates or attributes, except negative ones, and is there¬ 
fore entirely determinate; as such, he must be an individual 
Being, since every abstract conception or Idea is formed by ab¬ 
straction, that is, by throwing out some predicates. As the condi¬ 
tion of all existence, he is the source and sum of all realities, ens 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


289 


**<ecilissimum ; since he could not impart that which he did not him¬ 
self possess. In like manner, as the source or cause of all the at¬ 
tributes of his creatures, he must possess all those attributes, ex¬ 
cluding, of course, those which are mutually contradictory, and 
those which are merely negative, as these are conditioned by their 
positives; and he is Unconditioned. As Unconditioned, also, his 
existence does not depend upon anything else, but he is self-exist¬ 
ent, or uncaused, an absolutely necessary Being. To speak sum¬ 
marily, God must be thought as an Ideal, the most real of all 
beings, and as necessarily existent. 

Since only conditioned existence is immediately known to us by 
direct perception, how can we prove the necessary existence of this 
Ideal as Unconditioned ? Three ways are open for such proof. 
The first is the Cartesian or ontological argument: — that this 
Ideal, as perfect, includes all possible attributes; but existence is 
an attribute ; then the existence of God is contained in, and proved 
by, that Idea of God which we unquestionably possess. Kant’s 
answer is prompt and fatal; existence is not an attribute, and 
therefore is not included in the Idea. An attribute is that, by add¬ 
ing which, the sphere or intension of a term is increased; and by 
taking away which, the sphere is diminished. Now, to affirm ex¬ 
istence is simply to put the Copula into a Judgment, not to add 
another predicate to its subject, and thereby enlarge its sphere. 
When I have said, “ a triangle is a three-sided figure,” my idea or 
conception of it is not at all enlarged by adding “ the triangle is,” 
or exists; and conversely, by denying its existence, by saying 
“ the triangle is not,” I do not at all impair or diminish my con¬ 
ception of a triangle. My conception of Romulus, or George 
Washington, remains just the same whether I believe that such a 
man ever really lived, or not. Kant’s reasoning, then, is perfectly 
sound, though it is needlessly abstruse and technical in form. It 
may be more simply and forcibly stated thus : The idea of neces¬ 
sary existence certainly forms a part of our complex idea of God. 
But the reality of it does not follow from its idea, any more than 
the reality of a winged horse follows from my conception of 
Pegasus. In fact, as real existence is the very opposite of ideal 
existence, it is a contradiction in terms to affirm that the former, 
‘ the real,” is contained in the latter, “ the ideal.” 

The ontological argument must be abandoned, then, as having no 
weight whatever ; and Kant is equally peremptory in his attempt 
to sweep away the cosmological proof also. According to this ar¬ 
gument, in order to explain finite and relative things, we must sup- 


240 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


pose an infinite and absolute being. There must be a ground of 
being out of and beyond the relative and the finite, for as their 
nature and their very name import, they have no ground of being 
in themselves. The Conditioned, according to the very meaning 
of the word, depends on the Unconditioned. Now, all the objects 
and events of which we have experience are limited, contingent, 
and dependent; in one word, they are conditioned. They de¬ 
pend on antecedent events, and these again on their predecessors. 
They are fleeting; they rise and pass away. One generation suc¬ 
ceeds another; all are subject to change, decay, and death. There 
must be somewhere a cause or reason of these fleeting and de¬ 
pendent phenomena, some first principle, independent and necessa¬ 
rily existing, the source of all finite being; and this necessary ex¬ 
istence can be only the highest and most real of all, God himself. 
This is the cosmological argument; essentially it is reasoning from 
effect to cause, from secondary causes, if there are any such, up to 
the First Cause, the origin of all things. Kant finds fault with it 
at every step, as inconclusive and resting on baseless assumptions. 
The inference, he says, is from the contingent and dependent exis¬ 
tences, which we know through experience, up to a necessary and 
unconditioned existence, which we do not know, which lies wholly 
beyond experience, and is conceived only as an Idea, a mere fig¬ 
ment of human reason. There must be a necessary and indepen¬ 
dent being, it is argued, because an infinite series of contingent 
beings is impossible. Who told us it was impossible ? How can 
such impossibility be proved? In fact, we have no assurance that 
the series needs to be infinite. We take this infinity for granted, 
then assert it to be impossible, and are thus guilty of two un¬ 
founded assumptions in one breath. Suppose the chain of causes 
is finite, that it stops at a certain point; still we have no right to 
interpolate at this last link a new sort of existence, one lying 
entirely out of the series, an unconditioned and necessary being. 
Even if the reasoning were faultless, still it would give us only a 
necessary First Cause, which might be blind and purposeless, a 
fate or necessity, and therefore not a sum of all reality and per¬ 
fection, — not a God. 

Finally, we come to what is usually called the argument from 
design, though it is denominated by Kant the physico-theological 
proof. Instead of arguing from the mere existence of the world, 
as in the cosmological proof, the reasoning here is based upon the 
grandeur and excellence of the world, on the perfection which is 
presented in the arrangements of the universe, and ir the manner 


KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


241 


in which its parts are put together, and the succession of events in 
it is regulated. “ The world around us displays so grand a spec¬ 
tacle of order, variety, beauty, and conformity of means to ends, 
whether we follow it into the infinity of space on the one hand, or 
into the unlimited subdivisions of it on the other, that we find, 
even in respect to the imperfect knowledge of it which our eak 
minds can reach, that, in the presence of wonders so numerous and 
so inconceivably great, language has lost its force, and number its 
power to reckon ; nay, even thought fails adequately to conceive; 
so that our judgment of the whole resolves itself into an astonish¬ 
ment which is all the more eloquent, because it is speechless. 
Everywhere we behold a chain of causes and effects, of means and 
ends, of conformity to law in beginning to be and ceasing to be; 
and as nothing has entered of its own accord into the condition in 
which it is found, we are continually referred to some other thing 
as its cause, and this again suggests the same question respecting 
the origin of its being. Hence, the universe must sink into the 
abyss of nothingness, or we must assume something lying outside 
of this infinite chain of what is contingent, something primal and 
self-subsistent, which is the cause at once of its origin and its con¬ 
tinuance.” Reason compels us to admit that there must be an 
author of all these wonders, and to attribute to him all possible 
perfection. Kant speaks of this argument with great respect; it 
is, he says, “ the oldest and the clearest of all, and that which is 
most conformed to the common reason of mankind.” It animates 
the study of nature, and the knowledge of nature again reacts ^ on 
this idea as its cause, till “ our belief in a divine author of the uni¬ 
verse rises to an irresistible conviction.” 

Still, he affirms, we must abate the pride of human reason by 
showing, that this argument “ can make no claim to demonstrative 
certainty, and to an approbation founded only upon its own merits.” 
As it is limited to the arrangements of the universe, and to the 
manner in which its p«rts are put together, taking for granted the 
raw material out of which these wonders are fashioned, it proves, 
at most, only the existence of a world-architect, but not of one 
who created it from nothing. Besides, it establishes only the ex¬ 
istence of a cause proportionate to the extent and excellence of the 
arrangements which we behold; very great and astonishing as these 
are, even immeasurable by the human intellect, they do not author¬ 
ize us to conclude that the author of them is infinite, or even to 
ascribe to him all possible perfection. Even from such unity of 
plan, such, harmony in the cooperation of separate parts, as we per- 


242 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ceive, we cannot justly infer the absolute unity of Hina who made 
them. This argument, then, persuasive as it is, is far from pos¬ 
sessing all the requisites of scientific proof. It is not apodeictic. 

"Well, suppose it is not. This is only saying that we cannot 
demonstrate the existence of a God, in the same manner in which 
we demonstrate a theorem in geometry. From its very nature, a 
matter of fact is not susceptible of mathematical proof. It can be 
established only on the same grounds on which we rest our assur¬ 
ance of any actual occurrence in the past or the present, or of the 
reality of any person whom we have never seen. The great doc¬ 
trine of the being of a God is not a question about the relations 
of abstract ideas, and therefore does not admit of what Kant calls 
apodeictic certainty. It is rather a question of experience. It rests 
on the same sort of basis as our belief, that man is mortal; that we 
must all die; that we were born not many years ago, and passed 
through the stage of infancy, though we have not now the slightest 
recollection of that helpless period of our lives. We never visited 
Moscow; but we have not the slightest doubt that such a city ex¬ 
ists. We never saw Dr. Franklin, and probably never knew a 
person who had seen him; but we are fully convinced that he once 
lived and wrote. Who believes that his assurance respecting any 
of these facts would be enlarged or strengthened, if it could be 
changed to demonstrative certainty ? I think the world owes a debt 
of gratitude to Kant for proving beyond all question, that the being 
of a God cannot be demonstrated after the methods of the geome¬ 
ter and the metaphysician, and for thus removing it wholly out of 
the region of metaphysical abstractions. 

In like manner, the merely metaphysical conception of the nature 
and attributes of God may be abandoned with great advantage to 
the interests of religious belief. The metaphysical idea of infinity 
is an inconceivable abstraction. We cannot prove its existence in 
concrete, as realized in a personal and conscious God, simply be¬ 
cause we know not what it is; and whenever we attempt to grasp 
it, to reason from it or up to it, we are involved -in inextricable 
contradictions. The infinite is that which cannot be increased; 
but every thing which we know is capable of increase. The infinite 
has no parts; but every thing which we know consists of parts. The 
infinite admits of nothing beside itself, for it embraces all; then we 
ourselves are swallowed up in it, and are lost in this pitiless abstrac¬ 
tion. The only faith to which it leads, if faith it can be called, is 
pantheism; and pantheism is but logic run mad, and reason driven 
by despair to suicide; for it is self-annihilation. To the finite mind, 


KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 


243 


the infinite is a negative idea, the negation of all that is conceiv¬ 
able. When we are told merely what a thing is not, we are not 
thereby enabled to know what it is ; and what is the infinite to us 
except the not-finite, that is, not anything of which we ever had, 
or can have, experience? The mathematicians, after puzzling them¬ 
selves in vain about this negative conception for more than two 
centuries, have at last extricated themselves from the labyriuth by 
resolving the infinite into the mere indefinite; the infinitely large 
and the infinitely small, as they now confess, never meant anything 
in their language except quantities which might be made as large 
or as small as we please, without affecting the other conditions of 
the question ; that is, simply the indefinitely large and the indefi¬ 
nitely small. A similar reform needs to be made in all the philo¬ 
sophical sciences, including theology. As known to us, the infinite 
is not, what the etymology of the word imports, that which has no 
limits, but that to which we know of no limits, — that which is at 
least coextensive with the universe, or with all that we do know; 
how much greater than the universe, we cannot tell, but we may 
know hereafter. Is this an anthropomorphic conception of the 
Deity ? It is so in no other sense than as it declares, that every 
object of thought can be presented to us only as modified by the 
laws and conditions of that faculty through which we think it; 
just as the pure and white light of the sun must come to us through 
the earth’s atmosphere, and be thereby modified and partly shorn 
of its lustre, before it can reach our eyes, though even then it is 
so bright that we are dazzled and confounded by its rays. In a 
certain sense, before the mind of man can enter into communion 
with God, God must become man to our conceptions, even as he 
was incarnate to the bodily eye nineteen centuries ago. This is 
not saying that God is incomprehensible to us, except in the same 
manner in which we are incomprehensible to ourselves. “We 
know not what spirit is, still less what matter is, and least of all, 
how spirit can be united with matter; and yet it is this union 
which constitutes our own proper being.” We cannot reconcile 
the absolute unity of God with his omnipresence; we cannot even 
conceive what absolute unity is; since every thing presentable to 
sense or imagination is complex, consisting of countless parts, and 
may be divided and redivided, till the wearied mind refuses to fol¬ 
low the separating process any further. Yet each one of us is 
known to himself as an absolute unit. I am one, an indivisible 
Ego, one in my identity, one in my responsibility, one amidst a 
universe of complexity and change. And yet this unit of con- 


244 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


sciousness is ubiquitous to the nervous organism which it inhabits, 
present wherever it feels, and present therefore throughout all its 
extremities at once, tremblingly alive in every joint, nerve, and 
fibre. Man is to his own body, as a presence, what God is to the 
universe. We understand neither; but we know that it is so. 

Kant announces only a simple and obvious truth, when he de¬ 
clares that the grounds of proof must be at least coextensive with 
the thing which is to be proved. The order, the law, the conform¬ 
ity to purpose, the unity of plan, which are everywhere visible 
throughout creation, great and impressive as they are, are still 
finite ; at least, so far as man’s mind can comprehend them and 
reason from them, they are finite; then they do not, as Kant says, 
prove the infinite perfections of Him who made them. But they 
do prove the presence, throughout creation, of a mind commensu¬ 
rate with these wonders, coextensive with the universe, and to 
which we know of no limits. They do not then disprove the in¬ 
finity of that mind, but leave this point for the faith which tran¬ 
scends the Things of sense. They impress upon us as distinct a 
vision of their Author and his attributes as we have of the mind 
and character of any one whom we have not seen, but whom we 
judge from his works. This is all the lesson that they impart, for 
it is all that the intellect of man is capable of receiving. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Kant’s Groundwork of Ethics. 

Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason ” does not profess to make a 
survey of the whole mind of man, but only an analysis of its cog¬ 
nitive faculty; and even this analysis is not intended to be com¬ 
plete, but to be carried so far only as to point out what is primi¬ 
tive and a priori in the cognitive act, and thereby to explain the 
origiu, the nature, and the compass of all necessary and universal 
truth. In like manner, his “ Critique of Practical Reason,” with 
its two subsidiary treatises, the “ Metaphysics of Ethics,” and the 
Foundation or “ Groundwork ” of such Metaphysics, is not meant 
to cover the whole territory of our moral nature, and on this broad 
basis to build up an entire system of Ethics. Even here, Kant’s 
aim is rather speculative than practical; not so much to furnish a 
moral guide to life, or to teach man what he ought to do under 
every combination of circumstances, as again to separate what is 
primitive and a priori from what is empirical in our rules of con¬ 
duct, and thus, by eliminating all that is merely contingent and 
prudential in these rules, to display the pure Law of absolute moral 
obligation, primitive, comprehensive, and eternal, binding not only 
upon man, but upon God himself. Very austere and noble is 
Kant’s conception of such a Law, and, in setting it forth, he seems 
to burst from the impediments of his usually thick, clumsy, and in¬ 
volved expression, and his style mounts at times without effort 
into chaste and impressive eloquence. It is an admirable exposi¬ 
tion of the theory of duty, pure, elevating, and truthful; I know 
of nothing superior to it, in theory, except the divine original, 
which its author seems indeed to have kept closely in view,— 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

Kant leaps at once into the very heart of his subject, by point¬ 
ing out the distinction between Absolute and merely Relative Good. 
“ There is nothing in the world,” he says, “ and we cannot even 
conceive anything out of the world, which is absolutely good, that 


246 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


is, good per se, in all respects, and without exception or limitation, 
excepting a good Will,” meaning thereby a volition, or habit of vo¬ 
lition, proceeding from perfectly upright and virtuous intentions, 
without any admixture of a lower motive, but dictated solely by 
reverence for the Moral Law. Such a volition may be frustrated, 
as by palsy or other bodily weakness, even before appearing in 
any outward act. No matter ; the mere intent is good in itself, 
good per se , irrespective of success. Or the outward act, though 
meant for good, may be positively harmful. No matter again ; 
the Will was good, and conscience requires nothing more. Judg¬ 
ment, wit, discernment, or energy, firmness, courage — any high 
endowment of mind or character — is certainly good and desirable 
in many respects, but not in all; if not guided and restrained by 
a good Will, it may work great harm and wrong. Great intellect 
and an indomitable character, with an evil Will, is Milton’s con¬ 
ception of Satan; far from being good, it is devilish. So with all 
the gifts of fortune, such as wealth, power, honor, even health, 
general prosperity, and content with one’s lot, — all of these may 
be directed to evil ends; they may foster pride, indolence, inso¬ 
lence, self-conceit; they form only a relative good, relative to the 
use which is made of them. The sight of uninterrupted happi¬ 
ness itself, if it be adorned by no trait of a pure and good Will, 
can give no pleasure to a rational and unbiased spectator; and thus 
a good Will appears as the indispensable condition of the worth 
and dignity, the real desirableness, even of being happy. Again, 
some attributes of mind and character are serviceable to a good 
Will, and may facilitate its operation; such are moderation in our 
appetites and passions, self-control, and considerate self-examina¬ 
tion ; these even constitute in part the internal worth, the true re¬ 
spectability, of the person in whom they are manifest. But if 
detached from a good Will, they may become utterly bad; since 
the cold blood of a scoundrel makes him not only more dangerous, 
but in our eyes more worthy of detestation and abhorrence, than 
if he were a thoughtless, passionate, or reckless evil-doer. 

Hence, a good Will is good in and for itself alone; — not for 
what it produces, not for its utility, not through its fitness for the 
attainment of any higher end, for there is no higher end; but it is 
absolutely good, and is therefore to be prized infinitely higher than 
that which gratifies any desire, — higher even than the satisfaction 
of all our desires taken together. If, by the special hardship of 
our lot, and through the penurious allowance we have received 
from Nature, our grudging step-mother, this good Will is wholly 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 


247 


without the capacity to execute its purpose, even after the greatest 
effort; (for, observe, this good Will is not merely a virtuous wish , 
but it is the conscious strain of what faculties we have, the greatest 
possible exertion of all means, so far as they are in our power, to 
bring about the willed result;) — if this good Will, I say, be 
wholly impotent for its end in view, still, like a diamond, it will 
shine by its own light, as something which possesses its own full 
value in itself. Its utility or its uselessness can neither add to, nor 
detract from, this its intrinsic and absolute worth. A good outside 
of the Will, i. e., something aimed at, or a material good, even 
though it be so respectable as health, scientific or artistic culture, 
general well-being, etc., is only a relative good, not always or nec¬ 
essarily good, not good -per se. 

As this absolute Good is a purpose or intention, and, as such, is 
wholly internal, having its sole seat within the breast, any admix¬ 
ture whatever with it of an external and merely relative Good 
thoroughly corrupts and debases it, wholly stripping it of its pe¬ 
culiar character. It then ceases to be autonomous , or a Law unto 
itself, and becomes heteronomous, or that which receives the Law 
of its action from something else, outside of and superior to itself. 
A mere volition or purpose is not useful for anything; for, as I 
have said, it is wholly internal, and may not have any outward 
consequences, or it may have even bad external consequences, 
without thereby losing its own intrinsic and absolute goodness. 
And even to say that the outward act, which generally, but not 
always, follows the volition, is useful, leaves the matter short; for 
the question immediately arises, — useful for what ? For obtain¬ 
ing wealth, power, reputation, happiness? But then wealth, hap¬ 
piness, etc., become the end, for which a good Will, a virtuous 
intent, is only a means; and as a means is only subsidiary to its 
end, and derives all its excellence from it, the virtuous Will thus 
ceases to be an absolute, and becomes merely a relative, good. In 
other words, goodness ceases to be goodness, and wealth, happi¬ 
ness, or some other outward result, becomes the final end and aim, 
the absolute good ; a conclusion which shocks our whole moral 
nature, and is directly .contradicted by consciousness. If, argues 
Kant, happiness were man’s highest good, it would have been more 
securely gained by instinct than by reason. Instinct makes no 
mistakes. The brute is always led by the hand, like a blind child, 
as it were, towards the attainment of purposes of which it is un¬ 
conscious, the chief purpose always being the preservation of the 
animal’s own life and the continuance of its species. Incapable 


248 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


either of looking into the future or of judging the past, it knows 
neither anxiety nor repentance. It lives only in and for the pres¬ 
ent moment. 

Because the will is autonomous, or a Law unto itself, any refer¬ 
ence to utility, any consideration whatever either of private or 
public advantage, just so far vitiates the act, and makes it no longer 
virtuous. Thus, honesty is undoubtedly the best policy; but he 
who abstains from cheating merely because it is politic to curb his 
fraudulent inclinations, is really a dishonest man. Again, to pre¬ 
serve one’s life is a duty; but he who does so solely from the 
love of life is not virtuous, but merely prudent. Beneficence 
( bene-facio ) is not benevolence ( bene-volo ), except when one does 
good to others merely because it is a duty, and without reference 
even to that secret satisfaction, that joy within the breast, with 
which one contemplates his own good deeds. If conscience alone 
did not prompt the act, conscience will dishonor the drafts which 
are made upon it for self-approbation. The action may be con¬ 
formable to duty, even if the motive of it is only sensuous in¬ 
clination, e. g., the hope of gaining money, reputation, or future 
happiness; but only if done exclusively from a sense of duty, 
that is, from mere reverence for the Moral Law, irrespective of 
all consequences, is it strictly virtuous, or absolutely right. 

Hence it is obvious that the Moral Law is purely a priori. It 
discards all reference to experience; it is of absolute and intrinsic 
obligation, prior to all command; and it is universal, for it admits 
no exceptions, makes no compromises, and assumes authority over 
all intelligent beings, whether human or divine. Kant appropriate¬ 
ly denominates it the Categorical Imperative. This fundamental 
Law of the Practical Reason bears the form of an “ Imperative,” 
that is to say, a Commaud ; because man is not purely rational, 
but also a sensuous being, and the senses are generally in active 
opposition to the reason. It is not, like the maxims of prudence 
and utility, merely a hypothetical or conditioned command. It 
does not, like them,* say, Do this, if you would avoid a whipping; 
do it, if you would go to heaven; if you would be happy, if you 
would have wealth, or honor with your fellow men, etc. But it is 
a “ Categorical Imperative,” an Absolute Command. It says, Do 
this, though the heavens should fall. Do it, though thereby 
you should lose every thing in this world, and should even forfeit 
all hope in the world which is to come. Do it, and think not at 
all of the consequences. Be just, and fear not. This Law oper¬ 
ates upon conduct, because it is instinctively regarded not merely 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 249 

with approbation, but with reverence and awe; we cannot disobey 
its behests except with a feeling of shame and self-humiliation. 

Accordingly, Kant defines duty to be that necessity of perform¬ 
ing a certain act which arises solely from reverence for the Moral 
Law. “ For any object to be obtained as an effect of my action, I 
may have a feeling of inclination or liking , but never of reverence, 
for the very reason that it is an effect, and not an activity, of my 
will. Just so, I cannot have reverence for any inclination or 
liking whatever, whether my own, or another’s; I can, at the ut¬ 
most, only approve of it, if my own, or sometimes even love it, if 
another’s, because I regard it as conducing to my own advantage. 
Only that which is connected with my Will as its ground or reason, 
never as its effect; only that which does not subserve my inclina¬ 
tion, but overpowers it, or, at least, wholly excludes it from consid¬ 
eration ; consequently, only that which is a Law per se, can be an 
object of veneration , and therefore a command or ‘ Imperative.’ 
Hence, as an action done from a sense of duty must exclude the 
influence of inclination, and, with it, of every object of the will, 
there is nothing left to determine the will except, objectively, the 
Law, and subjectively, pure reverence for this Law, and a determi¬ 
nation to obey it irrespective of any inclination whatsoever.” 

Reverence, Kant insists, is a state of mind specifically different 
from all other feelings, in that it is self-created, through a concep¬ 
tion of the Reason. What I immediately recognize as a Law unto 
myself, I regard with reverence, which signifies merely the con¬ 
sciousness of the entire subordination of my will to its dictates, 
without the intervention of any influence on my senses. Hence, 
this feeling is never directed towards a person , except in a merely 
figurative sense, when the character and actions of an individual 
are considered as a mere embodiment or example of the Moral 
Law. Even the Saviour of mankind asked rebukingly, “ Why 
callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” 

This doctrine is admirably illustrated by Kant in an eloquent 
passage, with which many readers are familiar, as it is presented in 
a translation by Sir William Hamilton. “ Two things there are, 
which, the oftener, and the more steadfastly, we consider them, fill 
the mind with an ever new and ever rising admiration and rever¬ 
ence, — the Starry Heaven above, the Moral Law within. Of 
neither am I compelled to seek out its reality, as veiled iu darkness, 
or only to conjecture its possibility, as beyond the sphere of my 
knowledge. Both I contemplate lying clear before me, and con¬ 
nect both immediately with the consciousness of my own existence. 


250 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


The one begins from the place I occupy in the outer world of 
6ense ; expands beyond the bounds of imagination the connection 
of my body with it into a union with worlds rising beyond worlds, 
and systems blending into systems ; and protends it also into the 
illimitable times of their periodic movement, their commencement 
and duration. The other begins with my invisible self, with my 
personality ; and represents me in a world truly infinite indeed, 
but whose infinity can be tracked out only by the intellect, and 
my connection with which, unlike the fortuitous relation wherein I 
stand to all worlds of sense, I am compelled to recognize as uni¬ 
versal and necessary. In the former, the first view of a countless 
multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an 
animal creation, which, after a brief and incomprehensible en¬ 
dowment with the powers of life, is compelled to refund its con¬ 
stituent matter to the planet — itself an atom in the universe — 
on which it grew. The other, on the contrary, immeasurably ele¬ 
vates my worth as an intelligence ; and this through my personality, 
in which the Moral Law reveals to me a life independent of the 
animal kingdom, nay, of the whole material world: at least, if it 
be permitted to infer as much from the regulation of my being ex¬ 
acted by a conformity with that Law, which is not restricted by the 
conditions and limits of this life, but stretches out to eternity.” 

But a difficulty seems immediately to arise; for how are we to 
ascertain the content of the Law ? How can we know what are its 
dictates, what it enjoins and what it forbids, if we cannot have re¬ 
course to experience ? It would seem that the Moral Law, like 
the Categories, must be a mere blank, an empty form without 
matter, if there be not presented to it an empirical content, a 
manifold of intuition. Kant perceives the difficulty, and resolves 
it in a very ingenious and characteristic manner. He sums up all 
morality into one precept, which is so expressed, that its mere form 
of universality seems to render it definite, and thereby to supply 
the lack of matter. Thus speaks Reason absolutely a priori: Let 
thy rule of conduct in every case, be such, that it might become a 
universal law, to govern the actions of all mankind. More briefly 
and simply expressed : Always act as you would wish every in¬ 
telligent being, God himself included, to act, if he were in your 
place. And yet the problem is not here really solved, for this 
precept assumes, that my duty is made known to me only through 
my previous knowledge how all intelligent beings ought to act, if 
they were under precisely the same circumstances. How did I 
acquire this previous knowledge? How is it easier for me to 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 


251 


know what all mankind ought to do, than to recognize what is my 
own particular duty ? Obviously the Utilitarian will answer, that 
a regard to consequences, that is, the consideration whether the 
proposed action is, or is not, expedient in the long run, or as a 
general rule, must determine what I ought to do, through pointing 
out what any man, any intelligent being, ought to do in a similar 
case. 

This will appear more clearly, when we examine the particular 
cases adduced by Kant as illustrations of the mode of applying his 
universal precept. Suicide is the first instance, and is a very good 
one, since it is not easy, under any system of ethics, to demonstrate 
that this act in all cases is wrong. Kant argues thus. An indi¬ 
vidual harassed by a series of evils, sick of life, and believing his 
existence to be as useless to others as it is wearisome to himself, 
proposes to kill himself; but he first asks, whether this principle of 
suicide under strong temptation is fit to become a universal law; 
and he is at once obliged to answer, that it is not so fit, since the 
universal practice of self-destruction would make the world a 
desert and reduce creation to chaos. Now I am not so sure of 
that, since the universal law would only require all other men to 
do likewise, if they were placed under similar circumstances ; and it 
is hardly conceivable that they should be so placed. But waiving 
this difficulty; is it not obvious, that suicide is here proved to be a 
crime iu my own case, because it would be very inexpedient as a 
general rule, for then it would depopulate the earth ? The Utili¬ 
tarians themselves do not hold an expedient action to be criminal, 
except it be inexpedient on the whole, or as a universal principle 
of conduct. 

Kant’s second instance equally fails to substantiate his theory. 
A person in great need tries to borrow money, knowing that he 
cannot repay the loan, but being also aware that nothing will be 
lent to him, if he does not stoutly promise that the sum shall be 
repaid within a short time. Is he justified, then, in making a prom¬ 
ise which he knows will not be kept ? Certainly not, answers 
Kant; for if this were a universal law, that is, if everybody did 
so, all faith in promises would be destroyed, and nobody would ever 
fend money again. But here, too, the act is proved to be criminal 
in any one case, because it is assumed to be inexpedient in the 
long run, or as a general rule; and thus the fundamental principle 
of utilitarianism is not destroyed, but established. 

Those moralists who are not utilitarians, of course, will correct 
this portion of Kant’s theory in another manner. They hold that 


252 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


not only the Form, but in some measure the Content, of the Moral 
Law is made known to us a priori. Conscience not only tells me 
that such an absolute Law exists, and therefore that I “ ought,” 
irrespective of all other considerations whatsoever, to follow its 
dictates, but it makes known to a certain extent what those dic¬ 
tates are. It tells me what purposes are right, and leaves me to 
ascertain from experience the course of conduct by which those 
purposes can be most effectually carried out. This is only saying 
that, like our other Innate Ideas, the Law within the breast needs 
culture and development. Its liability to perversion and abuse 
proceeds chiefly from a neglect of the duty of self-examination. 
Strange as it may seem, we are often mistaken in respect to the 
motives and purposes which direct our conduct. So blinding is the 
influence of self-love, so insidious are the promptings of passion and 
appetite, that we often fancy that we are acting from a sense of 
duty, when we are really animated by ostentation, the pride of 
opinion, selfishness, or revenge. Conscience may even lapse into 
a state of morbid sensitiveness, or be stimulated into the fever of 
excitement which generates the cruelties of fanaticism and party- 
hate. Such perversions and abuses need to be corrected by the 
teachings of experience, that is, usually by utilitarian considera¬ 
tions ; but the liability to them does not disprove the inuateness and 
independence of our sense of right. 

Notwithstanding the strict and absolute necessity which, as all 
necessitarians believe, governs every act of the will, it is still true, 
as both Kant and Schopenhauer are obliged to confess, that all our 
actions are attended with a distinct consciousness, that they originate 
in ourselves and are in our own power, so that we are morally re¬ 
sponsible for them. But responsibility implies that we might have 
acted otherwise, and therefore presupposes freedom. To get rid of 
this contradiction, and thereby to reconcile the doctrine of neces¬ 
sity with this consciousness which involves freedom, Schopenhauer 
adopts Kant’s distinction between man’s empirical character, which 
is a phenomenon, and as such, is all that is directly manifest to ob¬ 
servation, and his intelligible character, which is a noumenon, or 
ding-an-sich, and, as such, is the inmost kernel of his real being, 
though we know it only indirectly. 

It is a familiar fact, that the same cause does not always pro¬ 
duce the same result, but that its action is necessarily modified by 
the peculiar nature or character of that on which it operates. A 
change in anything is the joint result of two factors, namely, its 
proper cause and the thing’s own nature or internal constitution 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 


253 


Thus the application of fire to powder explodes it; to wax, melts it; 
to clay, hardens it; to water, converts it into steam, etc. In like 
manner, a given motive, say, the desire of wealth, when acting on 
different persons, though with the same strength or intensity, may 
lead to very dissimilar actions. It induces one man to steal ; 
another, to be so parsimonious as to deny himself the ordinary 
comforts of life; a third, to be indefatigably industrious; a fourth, 
to envy or hate those who are richer than himself ; and so on. 
Why is this great disparity of results, when the motive is the same, 
and is equally strong ? Why are the resultant actions so dissimilar, 
even when each agent’s empirical character, which, as a phenome¬ 
non, is open to observation, and which is due to the shaping influ¬ 
ences of education, example, opportunity, and other external cir¬ 
cumstances, is apparently the same ? It is because each agent’s 
intelligible character, which was born with him, and makes him 
what he is, which is the noumenon or ding-an-sich of his inmost 
being, and so is his real Self, and which, precisely because it is a 
noumenon, is unknowable and inscrutable by others, and even by 
himself, — because this intelligible character, I say, is original and 
peculiar to himself, and is precisely that which differentiates him 
from every other human being. Also, because it is a noumenon 
again, it exists outside of Time, Space, and Causality, which are 
merely phenomenal forms of Sense or of the Understanding, and 
hence it cannot be necessitated or compelled, but is absolutely free. 
It does not exist in successive states or modes of its own being ; for, 
being out of Time, it is also incapable of existence in succession, 
since without Time there cannot be succession. Hence, its previous 
or antecedent condition cannot produce or cause its subsequent 
state. In itself, per se, it is unchangeable. Or still more briefly, 
being outside of Causality, it cannot be an effect, that is, it cannot 
be caused or modified by anything out of itself. And yet, as it is 
my only real being, the inmost core of my existence, my primitive 
and inborn Self, it must be present as a factor, it must enter as an 
element, into every change and every action of which my phenome¬ 
nal Self, my empirical character, is capable. What the Necessita¬ 
rian asserts is true, that each man’s empirical character is formed 
by previous circumstances. If he becomes a liar, for instance, 
among the causes which have made him such will probably be found 
defective education, bad company, the force of h^bit, and the pres¬ 
ence of strong temptation when he first uttered a falsehood. Now, 
with this acquired and empirical character, whenever a sufficient 
motive or temptation comes along, though it would not be suffi- 


254 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


cient for another and better educated man, this one cannot help 
telling another lie. So far, he is not free, and the Necessitarian is 
right. And in like manner, every empirical character, when a 
given motive or desire' is presented to it, must act as it does, must 
yield or resist, precisely like a stone when operated on by lever or 
pulley. The truthful man shuns the falsehood just as necessarily 
as the habitual liar utters it. Why, then, does he feel remorse or 
self-gratulation for what he could not help ? Why does conscience 
tell him what he ought to have done, instead of what he did do, 
though he does not censure a stone for rolling down hill, nor water 
for tumbling over a cataract; and his own action was not one 
whit less necessary than theirs ? Because, answer Kant and Scho¬ 
penhauer, this same conscience rightly tells him that he is respon¬ 
sible, — not indeed for doing this particular act, since this he could 
not help, — but for not being a better man, for not having a dif¬ 
ferent empirical character, which would have rendered it impossible 
for him to yield to such a motive, or to succumb to this temptation. 
He is responsible, not for what he does , but for what he is. Operari 
sequitur esse : the action necessarily results from the being of him 
who did it. Blame not the action, then, but the man for being 
capable of such an action. Whip him, not for telling this particu¬ 
lar lie, but for being a liar at heart; not for stealing this horse, 
but for being a thief or rogue in grain, in his inmost nature. For, 
this inmost nature, his real Self, his ding-an-sich, is his intelligible 
character , which, as a noumenon, is in some inscrutable manner 
emancipated from the laws of Time and Causality, from the opera¬ 
tion of motives, and is therefore absolutely free. He might have 
been a better man than he is, and therefore he ought to have been 
better. For this intelligible character is the primitive element, 
the original factor, out of which his empirical character was formed, 
and on which it is based and consequently, if it were other than 
it is, his whole subsequent moral nature, and his whole series of 
actions, would be different. And thus the deep and dark problem 
of fixed fate and free-will is solved, the two contradictories being 
reconciled with each other. As a phenomenon, man is just as 
much subject to necessity as a stone ; he moves only as he is 
moved. As a noumenon, he is lord of himself and his whole con¬ 
duct ; nothing can move him. 

Si fractus illabatur orbis, 

Impavidum ferient ruin®. 

He is free, he is responsible, he merits praise or blame. Du sollst , 
also du kannst. 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 


255 


Freedom is a power to act independently of any cause operating 
bo as to compel it to act; that is, it is an unconditioned causality, 
a First, or primitive cause. Such an unconditioned cause is never 
empirically made known, and therefore is never cognizable. Only 
phenomena can be objects of cognitive judgments, and therefore 
freedom cannot be either affirmed or denied. Empiricism is as 
little justified in denying freedom as Idealism is in affirming it. 
This is proved in the third Antinomy. If the Critical Philosophy 
denies the cognizability of freedom, it does not thereby also deny 
its existence. That would be Dogmatism. Neither does the 
“ Critique ” assert that freedom is unthinkable; for we can think 
anything that does not involve a contradiction. An absolutely lim¬ 
ited space, beyond which there would be no space, and a completed 
time, beyond which there would be no time, are unthinkable; for 
our intuitions of time and space are unlimited. But freedom, an 
unconditioned causality, is perfectly thinkable; for since cause and 
effect are not in eodem genere, nay, are radically unlike, there is 
no contradiction in supposing that effects, which are conditioned, 
should have a cause which is unconditioned. Freedom is think¬ 
able, then, and is even possible, though not as a phenomenon, or 
object of experience; and therefore it is not cognizable. In cer¬ 
tain cases, however, freedom is unthinkable. It is unthinkable as 
a part or member of the world of sense; it is impossible as an 
object of experience. And this holds true both of the external 
world of space, and of the interior or psychical world of time. If 
the causes are material, then the machine which is thereby moved 
is a mechanical automaton; if they are psychical, if they are 
motives, then the machine is a spiritual automaton. Such autom¬ 
ata are the Leibnitzian monads. They are, it is true, driven by 
causes which are within themselves; but they are not therefore 
any more free than a smoke-jack, which, after it has once been 
wound up, is necessarily kept in play from within, by its own in¬ 
ternal machinery. Then freedom is thinkable, not as a phenom¬ 
enon in experience, but as an intelligible cause, an intelligible 
character, a noumenon. Even thus, it is not cognizable, for nou- 
mena are incognizable ; but it is thinkable, and therefore possible. 
And our feeling of responsibility necessarily assumes, or postu¬ 
lates, that it is real. Moral obligation negatives incapacity. You 
ought, therefore you can. 

The Will, as such, must from its very nature have some end in 
view, something to strive for ; and this something is its Good, or 
its principle of iction. The nature of this Good depends upon 


256 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the constitution of the Will which seeks for it. If the Will be 
empirical and heteronomous, it seeks for this good in some exter¬ 
nal object or state, which experience has pointed out to it as a 
source of pleasure or happiness. Such are wealth, power, leisure, 
sensual enjoyment, the gratification of any passion or desire for 
the things of this world. So far as the Will strives for such ends, 
it is obviously empirical, having experience as its sole guide, and 
heteronomous, because it is not then an end unto itself, but finds 
something outside of itself, which becomes a law unto it, because 
supposed to be necessary for its well-being or enjoyment. Every 
such end is merely a contingent and temporary good, dependent 
on our ever-changing desires and moods of mind, and on the cir¬ 
cumstances of the moment. But the pure Will, which is an end 
unto itself, and which recognizes no principle of action but rever¬ 
ence for the Moral Law, seeks the unconditioned or absolute 
Good, not dependent upon anything, but good per se, the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever. This is the highest good, the 
summum bonum, which the ancients discussed so earnestly, and 
tried to fix with precision. What are its elements, according to 
Kant? 

They are two, perfect virtue and perfect happiness ; the former, 
because it is the supreme Good ; the latter, because the summum 
bonum must also be the consummate or perfect Good, and there¬ 
fore include in itself all other goods, such as the useful, the agree¬ 
able, peace of mind, content with our lot, and all other sources of 
happiness. The difficulty is, and it is the antinomy of Practical 
Reason, to reconcile these two elements with each other, that is, 
to make perfect virtue compatible with perfect happiness. The 
ancients endeavored to effect this combination by the analytic 
method, proving the one to be a necessary element, companion, or 
consequence of the other, so that by finding one we necessarily 
attain both. Thus, the Stoics taught that perfect virtue is at the 
same moment perfect happiness, the truly virtuous man needing 
nothing, and desiring nothing, beyond the consciousness of his own 
uprightness. The Epicureans, on the other hand, maintained 
pleasure to be the highest good, and that virtue is found to be one 
of its necessary elements or concomitants. But Kant maintains, 
and with reason, that two so heterogeneous notions cannot be found 
thus chemically interfused and combined, all experience going to 
show their frequent entire separation from each other. Neither 
are they related to each other as cause and effect, since the at¬ 
tainment of happiness is no proper motive for the exercise of 


KANT’S GROUNDWORK OF ETHICS. 


257 


virtue, and, in this world at least, perfect integrity does not in¬ 
sure perfect felicity. Too many also find their happiness in some¬ 
thing not coincident with the moral law. 

Kant seeks a synthetic union of the two elements of the sum- 
mum, bonum in the noumenal or intelligible world, since it cannot 
be found in the world of phenomena or sense. As rational beings, 
we are noumena, or beings per se, citizens of a supersensuous 
world, where the conflict between virtue and happiness does not 
exist. The highest good is to be realized, not as a means for any 
ulterior and higher purpose, but as itself the ultimate and highest 
end or aim of pure Reason. As such, it is unconditionally or ab¬ 
solutely necessary that this end should be attained ; yet this is not 
a physical, but a moral necessity. The realization of the highest 
good is morally necessary; therefore, it is also morally necessary 
that the conditions should exist under which alone the highest 
good can be realized. He who wills the attainment of the end 
must also will the conditions without which such attainment would 
be impossible. In other words, the Practical Reason, the Moral 
Law, postulates, or absolutely requires, the necessary means for 
the attainment of the highest good, that is, of perfect virtue united 
with perfect happiness. 

What are these necessary means ? They are two, the Immor¬ 
tality of the Soul and the Being of a God. Without the former, 
perfect virtue would be beyond our reach ; without the latter, 
perfect happiness would be unattainable. In this life, in this 
phenomenal world of sense, virtue is always a struggle and an 
effort — a perpetually recurring contest with temptation and sin. 
The victory over them is never final; we can never sleep upon 
our arms, but must be constantly up and doing, in order to chas¬ 
tise our selfish desires and keep down our rebellious passions. 
Now, the virtue which is thus perpetually assailed, and which can 
be kept up only by ceaseless effort and warfare, is at best limited, 
contingent, and incomplete; it cannot be made perfect except in 
an infinite lapse of time. Holiness, that is, perfect virtue, is pos¬ 
sible only in an eternity of being.' Consequently, the highest 
good, if it is to be realized by the human will, postulates by moral 
necessity the endless duration of human existence, that is, the 
Immortality of the Soul. 

Further still; the highest good requires consummate happiness 
jk the necessary consequence, the inevitable adjunct, of perfect 
virtue ; and this end cannot be obtained without the being of a 
God. The constitution of the universe, the whole current of the 
17 


258 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


world’s affairs, must be made to harmonize with the absolute re¬ 
quirements of the Moral Law. The conditions of such harmony 
do not exist in man; he is not the creator and governor of the 
universe. Happiness is largely dependent upon external condi¬ 
tions, on the conformity of physical law and the outward course 
of events, not only with the dictates of the moral law, but with 
the needs and requirements of our whole complex being. Such a 
conformity can be brought about only by an Author and Governor 
of nature, who, as such, must be distinct from Nature, because he 
rules it; who must also be omnipotent, since any limitation of his 
being would negative the perfect conformity which is requisite; 
intelligent, because he must act from a purpose and with a knowl¬ 
edge of man’s nature; and holy, because his purpose must be the 
realization of the supreme Good and the union of perfect felicity 
with perfect virtue. 

Hence we see that the three Ideas of Pure Reason, Freedom, 
Immortality, and the Being of a God, which the merely speculative 
Reason, on theoretical grounds alone, found itself incompetent 
either to establish or to disprove, are now presented as firmly 
rooted in our moral nature, — necessary postulates or assumptions 
of that voice of conscience, which claims absolute authority to 
direct our whole conduct. These Ideas then rest, not on knowl¬ 
edge, but on faith, on moral certainty, on that veneration for the 
law within the breast, without regard to which man becomes a 
brute or a demon, and this world a chaos. 



CHAPTER XV. 


Positivism. — Relations of what is called Science to 
Philosophy. 

The history of philosophy is, in great part, a record of the oscil¬ 
lations of the human mind between extreme opinions. In succes¬ 
sive periods, the pendulum swings to and fro, describing longer 
or shorter arcs according as the circumstances of the %ge have 
developed more or less activity of thought. We have seen that 
the philosophy of the eighteenth century was, in the main, a reac¬ 
tion from that of the age which preceded it, and, as such, that it 
was a dreary aggregate of the baldest empiricism, materialism, 
and unbelief. But thoughtful and earnest minds could not long 
remain content with the mockery, the sophistry, and skepticism of 
Voltaire, Diderot, David Hume, and Condillac, especially after 
their doctrines had largely contributed to the downfall of church 
and state in France, and brought all the institutions of society 
into peril throughout Europe. The current of opinion turned in 
the opposite direction, and the rise of what is called the Scotch 
philosophy, which is eminently conservative in doctrine, was 
hailed with joy both in England and France. Royer Collard, 
Maine de Biran, and Cousin revived a knowledge of Descartes and 
Malebranche ; Sir William Hamilton, as we have seen, repeated 
Pascal, and was also largely indebted to Leibnitz and Kant. 
During the first third of the present century, materialism and 
skepticism became generally discredited, and the doctrines of the¬ 
ism and the freedom of the will were taught in all the schools. , 

The influence of German philosophy, for more than half a cen¬ 
tury after the publication of the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” was 
restricted, in the main, to Germany itself, partly because compara¬ 
tively few persons out of the country were familiar with the 
language, but still more on account of the abstruse jargon of tech¬ 
nicalities in which Kant and his immediate successors, the philoso¬ 
phers of the Absolute, saw fit to enwrap their meaning. They 
continued to be the guardians of an occult science, which had lit- 


260 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


tie meaning or direct influence outside of the universities and the 
schools in their own land. Even eminent scholars and thinkers, 
like Dugald Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh in England, and 
Madame de Stael and Degerando in France, either neglected Ger¬ 
man philosophy altogether, or discussed it in a manner which be¬ 
trayed only their ignorance of the subject. As we shall see here¬ 
after, the tide of opinion in philosophy had its ebb and flow in 
Germany no less than elsewhere; but this movement of the waters 
was hardly perceptible from foreign shores. Not till about 1850 
were Kant, Schelling, and Hegel so far studied and understood by 
foreigners, that their influence could be felt throughout Europe. 
And this curious result has followed, that they began decidedly to 
affect the course of thought in other countries, only after their 
power and reputation had considerably waned at home. 

In France and England, within our own day, we have wit¬ 
nessed another great swing of the pendulum. A reaction against 
Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton, against Maine de Biran and Cousin, 
has brought back in all its essential features the philosophy of 
the eighteenth century. Once more, we have a period of pre¬ 
tended illumination, an Aufklarung , or clearing up of old preju¬ 
dices, and also a war to the knife against religion and the Church. 
Once more, the methods and the doctrines of empiricism and 
materialism seem to have the ascendency, and aim to control the 
thought of the age by the arrogance of their pretensions, and by 
the spirit of propagandism with which their followers are ani¬ 
mated. As the former period was denominated the Age of Rea¬ 
son, the present boastfully calls itself the Age of Science. Mr. 
Charles Darwin only repeats Helvetius and Lord Monboddo, 
when he tells us, that “man is descended from a hairy quadruped, 
furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its 
habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.” Herbert Spencer 
teaches us, “ that feeling and nervous action are the inner and 
outer faces of the same change ; ” and “ having contemplated 
these changes on their outsides,” as chemical disturbances prop¬ 
agated through any series of molecules in the substance of the 
nerves, “ we have to contemplate them from their insides,” as 
emotions and other states of consciousness. As one argument to 
support this broad conclusion, he cites the surprising fact, “ that 
as nervous action occupies appreciable time, so feeling occupies 
appreciable time; ” though the same analogy would prove that 
trundling a wheelbarrow does not differ from reading an epic 
poem. Then he develops at great length the noted hypothesis of 


POSITIVISM. 


261 


Condillac, respecting the automaton fashioned like a man, and 
shows how these nerve-changes, or sensations, may be gradually de¬ 
veloped into all the knowledge and feelings which occupy the 
human mind. Mr. Darwin seems to hold that a conscience may 
be developed in a baboon, and says expressly, that “ a pointer dog, 
if able to reflect on his past conduct [a very significant proviso], 
would say to himself, I ought (as indeed we say of him) to have 
pointed at that hare, and not have yielded to the passing tempta¬ 
tion of hunting it.” Mr. Spencer literally follows David Hume, 
when he asserts that “ the illusion ” of the freedom of the will 
“consists in supposing, that, at each moment, the Ego [or the 
psychical conscious Self] is something more than the aggregate of 
feelings and ideas, actual- and nascent, which then exists.” And 
he blunders still more wofully when he asserts, that the “ liberty 
to desire or not to desire is the real proposition involved in the 
dogma of free will; ” though Locke, Reid, Stewart, and Hamil¬ 
ton had cited the patent facts, that we often desire one thing and 
will another; that opposite desires, but not opposite volitions, may 
exist in the mind at the same moment; and that we will only what 
we believe to be within our power, though we often desire what 
we know to be beyond our reach. 

Mr. Huxley pithily expresses the necessitarian doctrine, when 
he protests, “that if some great Power would agree to make me 
always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of 
being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every morning be¬ 
fore I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.” 
The ingenious Mr. Maelzel, who, nearly a century ago, constructed 
a wooden man, about three feet high, that played a good game of 
.chess, also fashioned a smaller puppet, which pronounced quite dis¬ 
tinctly a number of words. Now, it matters not at all, most per¬ 
sons will think, whether a sentence uttered by this puppet be 
true or false, since there would be just as much merit, or demerit, in 
the one case as in the other. And if all mankind were wooden 
images so’constructed, I think that the difference between truth and 
falsehood, or between a right action and a wrong one, would not 
concern them in the least, and in fact would have no meaning for 
them. Mr. Huxley’s remark, if intended to be taken seriously, 
merely shows the lamentable cynicism, which is the only state of 
mind that can logically result from belief in a materialistic and fatal¬ 
istic theory of the universe. A Danton or a Desmoulins might utter 
it, while projecting the September massacres and the reign of the 
guillotine; for what sensible man would feel remorse of conscience 
pn beheading dolls and puppets? 


262 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


The doctrine of Descartes, that all the animals below man are 
mere machines, simulating life, contributed largely among his disci¬ 
ples, we are told, to the pitiless treatment of brutes, and to the 
beginning of that detestable practice of vivisection, renewed in our 
own day, and now much in vogue, which caused an eminent French 
surgeon many years ago to be stigmatized as “ the hellish Magen- 
die.” An eminent Cartesian, being in company with Fontenelle, 
received a poor dog, then big with pup, that came to fawn upon 
him, with so severe a kick that the animal yelped with pain ; and 
when Fontenelle showed some pity and indignation, the philoso¬ 
pher coolly observed, “ Eh quoi ! ne savez-vous pas bien que cela 
ne sent point ? ” Logically, the Cartesian was right; believing the 
dog to be a mere automaton, there was no more brutality in the 
act, than there would have been in kicking out of one’s path a 
broken rat-trap. And if human beings also, as the Positivists 
teach, are only curiously fashioned clocks or locomotive engines, I 
cannot see that there would be either wrong or harm in maiming or 
killing any number of them. An Attila or a Genghis Khan would 
then no more deserve reprobation, than a San Carlo Borromeo or a 
Howard would merit praise. 

The examples here cited are probably enough to show that, in 
all its essential features, the “ scientific ” materialism and skepti¬ 
cism of the present day, instead of evincing progress, would carry 
us back to the last century, being merely a revival of the philos¬ 
ophy of the French Encyclopedists. In this respect, as in so 
many others, we may find reason to think that the pretended new 
lights are but new editions of old darkness. Perhaps the parallel 
here indicated may be best carried out and illustrated by examin¬ 
ing, at some length, that system of philosophy which, though really 
of old date, has first acquired in our own times the name of Pos¬ 
itivism. The discussion will be more interesting in this place, 
because it will bring again into view, in their practical application, 
some of those great truths underlying our intellectual and moral 
nature, which were first systematically set forth and illustrated by 
Immanuel Kant. Both the heresy and the confutation of it 
properly belong to the eighteenth century. 

Notorious as it has become, Positivism pure and simple is not 
in good repute nowadays, and finds very few, perhaps not more 
than half a dozen, thorough-going adherents. In fact, since the 
death of its French founder, I hardly know any writers or think¬ 
ers of some note and importance, except Mr. Congreve, Mr. Harri¬ 
son, and Dr. Bridges in England, and perhaps M. Littr4 and one or 


POSITIVISM. 


263 


two others in France, who are now willing to be called Positivists, 
and as such, are still zealous and thorough-going advocates of the 
whole body of doctrine which was first promulgated, as he says, by 
Auguste Comte, though the real merit or demerit of the largest 
portion of it is due to David Hume. Even Mr. G. H. Lewes, 
author of two ponderous but well written volumes on the “ History 
of Philosophy,” though an earnest proselyte, as it seems to me, of 
Hume and Comte on all important points, or for general substance 
of doctrine, still does not accept the name of Positivist, perhaps 
because he prefers to be considered as an independent thinker. 
And Mr. Huxley, after giving an amusing account of the attempts 
made by two eminent speculatists to shake off the odious appella¬ 
tion, takes an opportunity of repudiating Comtism in his own be¬ 
half, and, he might have added, of taking leave of it in a very 
characteristic manner, by affixing to it a stinging epigram. He 
designates it, with no less truth than point, as “ Catholicism minus 
Christianity.” 

But how happens it, then, one will naturally ask, that a system 
of philosophic thought, first promulgated under the name of Posi¬ 
tivism about half a century ago by a partially insane French 
teacher of mathematics, which cannot now boast a corporal’s guard 
of devoted and thorough-going adherents, and is even scornfully 
repudiated in name by all the eminent speculatists and savans, who 
certainly have no predilection for conservative doctrines either in 
theology or philosophy, — how happens it, I say, that such a sys¬ 
tem has become, in the common estimation at least, at once so 
prevalent and so formidable; — a portentous exhibition of modern 
skepticism, menacing alike our ordinary beliefs, our philosophical 
creed, and our religious hopes; buttressed, as is supposed, by some 
of the best accredited results of physical science; fortified, as is 
feared, by the secret or avowed adhesion of a majority of the 
most distinguished physicists and naturalists, especially geologists, 
physiologists, and chemists ; growing in authority, spreading in 
influence, darkening in aspect, till it seems to overspread both the 
earth and the heavens with gloom, and to shut out the future into 
utter darkness; a system, to adopt Jean Paul Richter’s language, 
which makes “ the universe, human beings included, to be an autom¬ 
aton, God to be the uniformity of physical law, and man’s future 
a coffin ? ” I state the case strongly, but not too strongly, I think, 
for the convictions of some and for the apprehensions of all. Posi¬ 
tivism denies the efficacy of prayer and the being of a God; and as 
't not only rejects, but scoffs at, the doctrine of the freedom of the 


264 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


human will, it annuls the precepts and the sanctions of morality, 
loosens the bands of marriage and the family, and thereby shakes 
the very foundations of society. It is atheism and fatalism com¬ 
bined. Here surely is a remarkable phenomenon, and one deserv¬ 
ing of attentive study. What means this strange combination of 
seeming weakness and formidable strength ? 

We begin an answer to this question by remarking, that the 
name Positivism has two perfectly distinct meanings : — the first, a 
broad and comprehensive one, including the whole body of doc¬ 
trine taught by Auguste Comte in the six ponderous octavo vol¬ 
umes, averaging about eight hundred pages each, denominated by 
him “ the Positive Philosophy.” In this sense, Positivism hardly 
merits notice, for it does not now count over half a dozen prose¬ 
lytes among men of any repute as sober and earnest thinkers; 
since it includes, first, a scheme of classification of the sciences, in 
which all that is true and valuable belongs to Descartes, while 
Comte’s own part in it is meagre, not sufficiently worked out, and 
does not satisfy the conditions of the problem. Secondly, it in¬ 
cludes the law of the three successive stages, through which all the 
sciences have passed, or are passing, and which also, necessarily 
constitute three distinct epochs in the history both of every indi¬ 
vidual mind and of the human race. First is the theological stage, 
in which all events, all causation, are referred to the action of 
super-human beings. Second is the metaphysical period, in which 
causative power is ascribed to metaphysical entities or abstractions, 
regarded as the occult sources or principles of phenomena, such as 
Substantial Forms and Quiddities, — Nature’s horror of a vacuum, 
and even the modern doctrines of the attraction of gravitation, 
chemical affinity, and the like, when delusively considered as de¬ 
noting real forces or powers, and not as a mere classification of 
results produced by these fictitious causes. The third stage is that 
of Positive Science, so called, in which these names are recognized 
as mere abstractions or fictions, and both science and philosophy 
are restricted to the observation, classification, and prevision of 
phenomena. 

Here, again, all that is peculiar to Comte is the assertion, that 
these three stages or states of mind, or, as they may more cor¬ 
rectly be described, these three conceptions of the phenomena of 
the Universe in respect to their origin or efficient cause, are neces¬ 
sarily successive developments of thought and science, and thus 
constitute a real progress from error to truth, the first belonging 
only to the infancy of speculation, and therefore being naturally 


POSITIVISM. 


265 


and inevitably outgrown, as the mind matures and knowledge ad¬ 
vances ; while the second is equally temporary, being merely a 
step of transition to the third, at which epoch only the mists of 
superstition and metaphysical illusion disappear, and physical phe¬ 
nomena assume their true aspect, as seen through a clear atmos¬ 
phere. But this assertion is not true, is not even plausible, and 
its falsity is now almost universally admitted. These three modes 
of looking at the phenomena of nature are not successive stages 
in the history of thought; they are not even antagonistic to each 
other, so as to be mutually exclusive. They so far harmonize as 
to hold peacefully a divided empire, each being applied in its own 
province; that is, to its own peculiar class of objects and events, 
or wherever it is most fitting. They coexist now in many, per¬ 
haps in most, thoughtful and inquiring minds; they have so co¬ 
existed in every age since the dawn of science and religion in 
the East, and in Greece. Nearly all speculatists and students of 
nature refer one class of phenomena to personal agency, either 
human or divine; another class to what are called second causes 
or intermediate agencies, the existence of which is admitted, even 
when they are held to be undiscoverable; while a third class are 
merely observed and classified according to their relations and 
affinities with each other, their origin and inmost nature not be¬ 
coming subjects of investigation, because confessed to be inscruta¬ 
ble. Indeed, any mind would be lamentably deficient in breadth 
of view and catholicity of doctrine, which did not philosophize and 
interrogate nature under each of these three aspects, or with refer¬ 
ence to such possible threefold classification of its phenomena. 

Thirdly, Positivism in its broad sense includes Comte’s develop¬ 
ment of his philosophy into a theology and a church ; a theology 
which admits neither a revelation nor a God, but inculcates the 
systematic worship of that gigantic idol representing Humanity at 
large, or the whole human race, which Hobbes of Malmesbury 
called “ the Leviathan,” but which is here denominated “ the New 
Supreme Being.” In the church which he instituted for such 
worship, Comte puts himself in the place of Pope or High Pontiff, 
and a rather disreputable female, the wife or widow of a galley 
slave, who was the object of Comte’s fervent love and adoration 
for one year only before her death, is installed as chief of the 
Positivist saints, his prayers or acts of adoration being directed, 
during the latter part of his life, not to her “ departed spirit ” cer¬ 
tainly, for the immortality of the soul is not one of the doctrines 
vf the new church, but to her memory. This is the theology and 


266 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the ecclesiastical organization which Mr. Huxley properly stigma¬ 
tizes as “ Catholicism minus Christianity.” As a pitiable exhibi¬ 
tion of insane fancies and monstrous self-conceit, it deserves no 
further notice. 

Now, on each of the three points thus far enumerated, Positiv¬ 
ism is so far from being formidable, that it is simply contempti¬ 
ble. In respect to each of these doctrines, it counts very few 
adherents, and makes no converts. But after throwing overboard 
all this trash, together with some minor speculations closely affili¬ 
ated with it, for we cannot here enter into details, there still re¬ 
mains a body of doctrine properly denominated Positivism in the 
narrower sense, which is, however, really of metaphysical origin 
and purport, its parentage in modern times being distinctly tracea¬ 
ble to David Hume, from whom Comte borrowed it, and, as usual 
in such cases, marred and disfigured it in the borrowing. Hume 
knew little or nothing about natural history or physical science ; 
he was a metaphysician pure and simple, a teacher of skepticism 
on metaphysical grounds. But his system was adopted and applied 
by Comte as, in a special sense, the Philosophy of Physical Science; 
and in this respect, Comte has been followed, not only by such 
speculatists as John S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Lewes, but 
by a large and increasing number of naturalists and physicists, who, 
of course, only in this narrower sense are earnest and thorough¬ 
going Positivists. It is equally clear, that the system thus under¬ 
stood is not specially corroborated by their adhesion to it; for, as 
I have said, it does not rest upon physical, but upon metaphysical 
grounds. Even its title is a misnomer ; far from being positive in 
character, it is essentially negative ; it is not a philosophy, of 
science, but of nescience. 

For a precise and succinct statement of the Positivist doctrine in 
this narrower sense, I borrow the language of its most zealous and 
authoritative adherent, Mr. John S. Mill: “We have no knowl¬ 
edge of anything but phenomena; and our knowledge of phenom¬ 
ena is relative, not absolute. We know not the essence, nor the 
real mode of production, of any fact, but only its relations to other 
facts in the way of succession or similitude. These relations are 
constant; that is, always the same in the same circumstances. 
The constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the 
constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, 
are termed their laws. All phenomena without exception are gov¬ 
erned by invariable laws, with which no volitions, either natural or 
supernatural, interfere. The essential nature of phenomena, and 


positivism. 267 

their ultimate causes, whether efficient or final, are unknown and 
inscrutable to us.” 

But if thus understood, Positivism is only another name for 
Empiricism, or the doctrine that all our knowledge comes from ex¬ 
perience through the senses; and as such, it may fairly claim the 
unanimous assent of men like Huxley and Tyndall, Darwin and 
Helmholz ; for it is a correct statement, it is the truth, in relation 
to their “ science ” as they understand it, and, in fact, as it is com¬ 
monly understood. If we leave out of view the fundamental prin¬ 
ciples upon which it rests, and which it is no part of its business to 
investigate, since every science must take its own first principles 
for granted, mere Physical Science, even when so construed as to 
include all branches of Natural History, relies exclusively upon, 
and is advanced solely by means of, observation through the senses 
and experiments addressed only to the senses. Here, in its own do¬ 
main, sense reigns paramount and holds undivided sway. Physi¬ 
cal Science recognizes no facts which cannot, directly or indirectly, 
be made evident to sense. All its modes of verifying facts, that is, 
of discerning the false from the true, are founded, in the last resort, 
solely upon the testimony of the senses. Hence, when the physi¬ 
cists and naturalists say, as they now frequently do, ‘ Science knows 
nothing of this or that conclusion; Science perceives no substance 
underlying the phenomenal qualities of things; Science never has 
found, and never can find, any efficient causation binding events 
together, but observes only their invariable sequences; Science 
never ascends to the origin of things, and hence has nothing to say 
about creation ; Science discerns no purpose or intention , no final 
cause , in nature; Science finds no proof of the existence of that 
being which each of us calls myself, except he thereby means my 
body ; Science beholds no evidence of the being of a God; ’ I say, 
when Mill, and Huxley, and Tyndall, assuming to speak for all 
Physical Science, make these assertions, or rather these avowals of 
ignorance and incompetence, they tell nothing but the plain truth, 
and therefore, no wonder that they find many adherents among men 
of similar pursuits and studies with themselves. These disavowals, 
these negative assertions, which constitute the whole doctrine of 
nescience, or Positivism in the narrower sense, convey only the 
harmless truism, that man’s outward senses testify to none of these 
things. Quis dubitavit ? We cannot see, touch, hear, smell, or 
taste either Substance, or Cause, or Self, or God. From the tes¬ 
timony of sense alone, not supplemented by any other source of 
knowledge, we cannot even legitimately infer the being of either 


268 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of these four, or the creation of the universe, or the reality either 
of efficient or final causation. Thus far, Positivism has gained the 
day, since no one appears to contest the case. j 

But in this doctrine, whimsically termed Positive, though it is 
exclusively negative, much more is implied than is openly stated; 
and it is with these implications that we are now concerned. The 
“ Science ” which thus avows its incapacity to penetrate beneath the 
surface of things, because it cannot go beyond the domain of the 
senses, is mere Physical Science. The implied but unfounded as¬ 
sumption is, that it is science in the larger sense, or human knowl¬ 
edge itself, which is compelled to make these humiliating confes¬ 
sions. “ Science ” is only the Latin equivalent for our good 
Anglo-Saxon word, “ knowledge; ” but common use now makes it 
a mere synonym of “ Physical Science,” which is only a fraction of 
human knowledge. The Positivist avails himself of this poor ver¬ 
bal ambiguity, in order to discredit and rule out of court all meta¬ 
physical and moral science; that is, to reject the whole testimony 
of consciousness, as well as the fundamental truths which are the 
first principles alike of mathematics, logic, and philosophy, — nay, 
even of the whole edifice of human knowledge. He fails to per 
ceive that, herein, he adopts a suicidal policy; for Physical Science 
itself is based upon these fundamental truths, and without them 
can make no progress, and cannot even verify what it has already 
discovered and systematized. Descartes aptly compared the whole 
of man’s knowledge to a tree, of which Metaphysics are the root, 
physics are the trunk, and the other sciences the branches. Every 
science, except Metaphysics, must begin by taking something for 
granted ; it cannot verify its own first principles. This task it 
relegates to Metaphysics, which is therefore rightly termed the 
science of first principles. 

Indirectly we find this assertion confirmed by the well-known 
fact, that these dogmatical specialists, in their crude attempts to 
confirm and explain their positive denial of all hyperphysical truths, 
solely on the negative ground that their special “ science ” knows 
nothing about them, find themselves obliged to carry over the dis¬ 
cussion into the very territory where, as - they say, there is no rest 
or foothold, — into that dreamland which they declare to be peopled 
only by phantoms. Unwittingly and in spite of themselves, they 
talk Metaphysics ; they are compelled to preach the very doctrine 
and method which they disavow. Huxley attempts to build upon 
Descartes and Berkeley ; Herbert Spencer and Tyndall draw their 
weapons from the armory of Hamilton and Hume. 


POSITIVISM. 


269 


I prefer, however, to follow the direct argument, and to show 
specifically, and in each case, that the denial of first principles, 
which is the distinctive feature of Positivism, is suicidal, since it 
takes away the groundwork even of physical inquiry, and reduces 
empirical science itself to a series of baseless assumptions. 

The first principle, the necessary a priori assumption, upon 
which all chemistry depends, is the axiom, which is at least as old 
as Leucippus and Democritus, that matter is both ingenerable and 
indestructible. Nihil gignitur , nihil interit; not an atom of mat¬ 
ter is ever created or destroyed. This maxim certainly is not given 
to us by experience, for, without it, experience is meaningless, and 
would teach us nothing. A compound substance cannot be resolved 
into its elements, or reconstituted from those elements, if we do 
not arbitrarily assume, in the first place, that, at the moment of 
analysis or synthesis, not a particle of one or the other substance 
is either created or annihilated. The water vanishes, hydrogen 
and oxygen appear; or vice versa. What is the chemist’s ground 
of assurance here, that the same substance persists or endures, only 
its outward properties or attributes, its manifestations to sense, 
being changed ? Is it because the total weight remains the same 
after the experiment ? But that proves nothing, except that, for 
each atom or molecule destroyed, a new one, its precise equivalent 
in weight, is created. Besides, why infer identity from the one 
attribute, weight, which persists in amount, rather than infer differ¬ 
ence from all the other properties — volume, color, texture, con¬ 
sistency, chemical affinities, etc., — which undergo great change? 
And what is this necessary axiom, this first principle a priori of 
physical science, but the perdurability of material substance, — the 
fact that any change or transformation, however great, affects only 
the accidents, the outward properties of things, while underneath 
these attributes, and so imperceptible to sense and inscrutable by 
analysis, there lies something which is permanent, which knows no 
change, and which really constitutes the inmost essence and actual 
being of all material things; — what, I ask, is this first principle 
except that very metaphysical entity, pure Substance , which the 
Positivists attempt to ignore and banish, on the ground that 
“ Science ” knows nothing of it ? So far as this is true, so much 
the worse for “ Science,” who here pulls her own house down. 

Lavoisier, the French chemist, as quoted by Mr. Huxley, tells 
us: “We may lay it down as an incontestable axiom, that in all 
the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal 
quantity of matter exists before and after the experiment; the 


270 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same, 
and nothing takes place beyond changes and modifications in the 
combinations of these elements. Upon this principle the whole 
'art of performing chemical experiments depends; we must always 
suppose an exact equality between the elements of the body exam¬ 
ined and those of the product of its analyses.” 

The indestructibility of matter is here correctly held by Lavoi¬ 
sier to be the condition, or indispensable prerequisite, for perform¬ 
ing any experiment, or rather for proving anything by experiment. 
But Mr. Herbert Spencer, with astounding false logic, is compelled 
by his Positivist theory to maintain that this indestructibility was 
first proved by experiment. “ So far from being admitted as a 
self-evident truth,” he says, “ this [proposition that matter is inde¬ 
structible] would, in primitive times, have been rejected as a self- 
evident error.” “ Nor, indeed,” he adds, “ have dark ages and 
inferior minds alone betrayed this belief.” “The gradual accumu¬ 
lation of experiences, however, and still more the organization of 
experiences,” that is, we suppose, the progress of Science, “has 
tended slowly to reverse this conviction; ” and “ we have learnt 
that, relatively to our consciousness, Matter never either comes into 
existence or ceases to exist.” First Principles, chap. iv. 

Take another example. What are called “ the Laws of Nature ” 
are only generalizations from experience; and experience has no 
validity as a ground of proof, if we do not first assume the veracity 
of Memory. This, indeed, is the significance of the word; ex¬ 
perience means nothing but an aggregate of remembered facts. 
But what is our ground of assurance that Memory is trustworthy ; 
that is, that the facts are rightly remembered, or even that they 
are remembered at all, and not rather imagined under an illusive 
semblance of Memory ? It is the conviction, or the a priori intu¬ 
ition, — call it what you please, — that I, the person now remem¬ 
bering the facts in question, am the same person who actually 
witnessed those facts at the time of their occurrence, say, yester¬ 
day, or a week ago. The only possible reason for asserting that 
the fact as remembered is one that actually happened, is the abso¬ 
lute identity of what may be called my past self, witnessing the 
event, with my present self, now bearing testimony to its occur¬ 
rence. The. evidence of the person now remembering is available 
only under the supposition that he is one and the same person 
with him who saw or heard, at a given previous time, that to which 
he now testifies. But Hume, Herbert Spencer, and other Posi¬ 
tivists affirm that “ Science ” knows nothing of the identity, or even 


POSITIVISM. 


271 


of the existence, of any such being as Self, considered apart from 
the distinct and successive states of consciousness. What others 
call Mind or Self is, according to them, only a series of successive 
sensations and ideas, existing only one at a time, Consciousness at 
any one moment evidencing the existence only of the one sensation 
or idea then and there v present to it, but which immediately passes 
away and gives place to another. To change the figure, they hold 
that Self is a string of beads from which the string has been re¬ 
moved, so that there is no longer any connection between them, the 
beads constantly slipping through the thinker’s fingers, since he grasps 
only one of them at a time, and that but for a moment. Neither 
past nor future is in any way present to consciousness. “ They 
are the successive perceptions only,” says Hume, “ which constitute 
the mind.” But if Self, the conscious thinking being, be not 
present, so to speak, all along the line, if he be not the permanent 
spectator of the ever changing phenomena, the persistent, identical 
substance underlying and witnessing the ever fleeting states, then 
memory is a mere illusion, and the past is but a dream, which 
affords no ground whatever for anticipating the future. Experi¬ 
ence is only a cheat. Then what becomes of the boasted fixity 
and universality of Physical Law, which is only a projection of 
the past into the future ? I say, therefore, that the continuous 
existence and identity of the thinking Substance is a condition or 
prerequisite of memory, without which experience is impossible. 

The truth is, the Empiricists or Positivists here commit, in an 
aggravated form, the very fault which they charge upon their op¬ 
ponents, — the fault, namely, of dealing with pure abstractions, 
mere figments of the brain, as if they were realities, real entities. 
Except as pure abstractions, entirely divorced from reality, there 
is no such thing as Thought without a Thinker, Perception with¬ 
out a Percipient, Sensation without a Sentient, Action without an 
Agent, Jumping without a Jumper. Here, I am not going behind 
experience to first principles, or digging up hyperphysical realities 
under observed facts. I am not going behind or under observation 
at all, but am only pointing out what we observe, whether as a 
reality or a mere phenomenon, it matters not. What we actually 
observe, by way of sense, is not the abstraction, motion , but the 
concrete fact, a particular moving thing or object; what we are 
actually conscious of is not the pure abstraction, hunger , but the 
concrete fact, I am now hungry. Precisely this is the meaning of 
the famous Cartesian argument. Descartes does not say, Cogitatio , 
f rgo res cogitans est; that would be to start from an abstraction, 


272 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


and to proceed by reasoning. Whereas he directly affirms, as a 
particular fact of observation, Cogito , scilicet sum. This is not an 
inference; Descartes and his followers all agree that it is not. It 
is only making the statement of a fact explicit. 

As a third example, to show that all empirical or Positive science 
must rest upon a metaphysical basis, that is, upon the assumption 
of first principles not evident to sense, and yet more unquestionable 
than any sensible fact, take the necessary postulate of all inductive 
science. What is the ultimate ground of Induction ? Not experi¬ 
ence, I say, but something which transcends all experience. In¬ 
duction is that process of thought by which we infer the unknown 
from more or less similar cases which are known; that is, we arbi¬ 
trarily extend the principle or law, from phenomena already ob¬ 
served and analyzed, to other phenomena of which, as yet, we have 
no experience whatever. What authorizes us to do so? What 
causes such a procedure even to appear legitimate ? Certainly not 
experience, for the question is expressly limited to cases ctf which 
* we have no experience. Induction assumes to make known the 
future, to declare what will be the result of future observation and 
experiment; and it is a contradiction in terms to say that we have 
had experience of the future. Granted, say the Positivists; but, 
they argue, we have had experience of what was future; we have 
already tried Induction in numberless cases, and its results have 
been verified by subsequent experience. This subsequent verifica¬ 
tion, they say, makes up for and cancels the original illegitimacy 
of the process. Does it? I maintain, on the contrary, that this 
answer is grossly illogical, and does not even touch the point at 
issue; and I am sorry to say that the fallacy in it is not only coun¬ 
tenanced, but expressly adopted, and made the corner-stone of his 
whole philosophy, by so eminent a thinker as Mr. John S. Mill. 
It is a gross petitio principii. What merely “ was future ” has 
already, by hypothesis, ceased to be future, and become the past; 
therefore, in reasoning from it, we are still reasoning from the 
past to the future, from that of which we have, to that of which 
we have not, experience ; the very process whose legitimacy is in 
question. Mr. Mill, and all the Positivists along with him, act¬ 
ually brings an induction to prove the validity of the inductive 
process. Why will taking opium put one to sleep ? Because it 
always has put people to sleep. But what proves that the induc¬ 
tion in this case will be verified by subsequent experience? Be¬ 
cause induction in numberless other cases has been verified by 
experience. Am I not reasoning from the past to the future, from 



positivism. 273 

the known to the unknown, just as much in thus proving induction 
to be valid, as in proving opium to be soporific ? 

To make this point still clearer, I borrow an illustration in part 
from Dr. Campbell. Let us suppose our whole time divided into 
five equal portions, A, B, C, D, E, the first four of which have 
been experienced, and found to be similar to each other, while the 
last, E, is still in the future. Now how must I argue with regard 
to this last ? Shall I say, “ B was like A, C was like B, D was 
like C; therefore E, of which, by hypothesis, I as yet know noth¬ 
ing, will be like D ? ” This would be strange logic; for E, the 
minor term, the subject of the conclusion, does not appear at all 
in the premises. Is the reasoning made more legitimate, then, by 
supposing, as the Positivists do, that the induction in this case, 
and in numberless other cases, was originally made antecedently 
to experience; but that in each instance it was verified by subse¬ 
quent experience? Let us see. We have only to suppose a few 
more cases, F, G, M, N. Now, our reasoning runs thus : “We 
were first led to believe, on inductive principles, that E would be 
like D ; and this induction was verified by subsequent experience. 
In a similar way, the several inductions that F would resemble 
E, and G be like F, and M would be like G, were each and all 
verified by later experience.” Shall we then argue that the induc¬ 
tion about N, which is still future, will also be verified by later 
experience ? But this is empirical logic again ; for N, the minor 
term, does not appear at all in the premises. And the same dif¬ 
ficulty recurs, if, instead of four, we suppose four million, previous 
cases. Turn the matter as we may, the principle which is the 
ground of induction is a law of thought, and not a law of things, 
— not an educt from experience. It teaches what an original 
and innate law of our mental constitution obliges us to expect, 
but says nothing about what must, or must not, actually happen. 

When the mathematician applies the Doctrine of Chances, his 
calculations are based upon this innate principle, this fundamental 
law of human belief. The calculated probability is subjective, 
and not objective. The computer does not even assume to in¬ 
crease our quantity of information, or to reveal any new data on 
which our judgment ought to be based ; but only how we ought 
to judge and to act on the data already in our possession. We 
are not even assured that the calculated result will be verified 
at the first trial, or at any subsequent trial; the computation only 
shows us how we ought to expect the actual results to be dis¬ 
tributed in the course of an infinite number of trials. We see 
18 


274 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


that this must be so, because the theory does not concern future 
events only, the occurrence of which is still contingent, but may 
be applied also to the past, to determine whether we ought to be¬ 
lieve that the event did, or did not, take place. In such case, the 
application of the theory cannot affect the event itself, which is 
already irrevocably determined either one way or the other; but it 
only assumes to guide our judgment in determining how much our 
opinion ought to incline either to the positive or negative side as 
to its occurrence. To adopt an illustration familiar to experts in 
this department, all nature may be compared to an immense urn 
containing a countless number of balls, about the qualities of any 
one of which, antecedently to experience, we know nothing. Man 
has the privilege only of drawing out one of these balls at a time, 
and after determining its color, of returning it to its place in the 
urn. Suppose ten millions, or any larger number, of such trials 
to be made, and each time, as the invariable result, a white ball to 
be drawn. The induction here is very complete; but does it 
prove that a white ball must be drawn at the very next trial? 
Certainly not. It is just as possible that the next trial will pro¬ 
duce a black ball as a white one; and Nature or Providence — 
use which name you choose, — may have so determined, at the 
outset, the relative numbers of whites and blacks, that, if we knew 
those numbers, and calculated the chances, the drawing of a black 
ball would be precisely what we ought to have expected. Let 
the Empiricists talk as they may about the universality and the 
certainty of Physical Law; if they mean thereby that such Law 
necessarily will hold good one moment beyond the present time, or 
necessarily has held good, in the past, in a single instance beyond 
those cases which have actually been observed, I scoff at their as¬ 
sertion ; not at their evidence, for they have none. 

Another dictum of the Positivists, that which concerns Final 
Cause, deserves examination, as it illustrates so clearly two of the 
unfounded assumptions which underlie and pervade their whole 
philosophy: first, that a fact incapable, from its very nature, of 
being verified by the testimony of the senses, cannot be established 
by any other sort of evidence ; secondly, that our mere ignorance 
whether a thing does, or does not, exist can be legitimately con¬ 
verted into a categorical denial of its existence, and, as such, may 
then be made an axiomatic principle, to restrict the conclusions to 
which later inquiry might otherwise lead. 

Thus, we are often reminded nowadays of the doctrine, which is 
at least as old as Lucretius, that Science knows nothing about any 


POSITIVISM. 


275 


supposed purposes for which different organs were made. Science 
tells us that such organs exist, and that we can learn only how 
they exist, what is their structure, and what functions they per¬ 
form. An organ is characterized by its formation, we are told, as 
this compels it to subserve one function rather than another. All 
that Science teaches us is, that an animal follows the mode of life 
which its organs constrain it to follow. 

Now, if our senses are our only guide, this is perfectly correct 
doctrine; for these facts only are evident to sense, and the “ Sci¬ 
ence,” which is here in question, accepts no data which have not 
the testimony of the senses. We needed not the authority of em¬ 
inent physiologists, however, to establish this limitation of scien¬ 
tific inquiry; since everybody knows at once that purpose, or 
Final Cause, is a phenomenon of mind, not of matter, and as 
such, from its very nature, cannot be subject to sense, but is wit¬ 
nessed solely by consciousness. Material phenomena, outward 
acts, may indeed afford signs or indications, from which we may 
infer, with more or less confidence, that they were purposed or in¬ 
tentional ; but the thing signified, the governing purpose, is not 
manifest to sense. 

Observe, moreover, how soon this innocent avowal that u Science ” 
is unable to testify to the presence of design passes over into the 
vastly broader, but wholly illegitimate, affirmation, that there is no 
end or purpose discoverable by the human intellect, in whatever 
way the search for it may be prosecuted. Confessedly incompe¬ 
tent to observe the presence of a mental phenomenon, how is 
Science authorized to affirm its absence — that it does not exist in 
any case whatsoever ? This is much like attempting to sound the 
Atlantic with a ten-foot pole, and declaring the result of numerous 
experiments thus made to be, that the ocean is bottomless. Decan- 
dolle says, “’birds fly because they have wings; but a true natural¬ 
ist will never say, that birds have wings in order that they may 
fly.” The functions are a result, and not an end or purpose. 
Lucretius affirmed the same thing long ago. 

“ Nil .... natum est in corpora, ut uti 
Possemus ; sed, quod natum est, id procreat usum.” 

Who told them so ? What right have Geoffroy St. Hilaire, or 
Decandolle, as mere naturalists, to have any opinion on the sub¬ 
ject ? Who consulted them at creation, or informed them after¬ 
wards, that the eye was not made in order that the animal pro¬ 
vided with it might see, but that it was formed by a hap-hazard 


276 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


tentative process, which, after innumerable purposeless variations, 
happened at last to produce a form favorable to sight, — pretty 
much as he who shoots entirely at random, and with his eyes shut, 
may at last, merely by accident, hit the bull’s eye, if he has pa¬ 
tience to try long enough ? 

Mr. Huxley speaks of “ the fruitless search after final causes; ” 
and censures “ those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break 
through all the laws of physics in chase of their favorite will-o’- 
the-wisp.” He therefore agrees with Mr. Mill, who, in the passage 
already cited, declares that final causes “ are unknown and inscru¬ 
table to us.” 

Surely this is a humiliating confession to be made by the Posi¬ 
tivists, that their Science knows not, and never can know, a fact 
which is still patent to the consciousness of every human being, at 
every hour of his waking and conscious existence. Every sane 
person is perfectly aware that, with a few insignificant exceptions 
due to mere caprice or weariness, he never acts, either on great or 
slight occasions, he never takes a single step, without a purpose, 
distinctly recognized by him, of thereby attaining some desired end, 
or reaching some wished-for place. Any one would even reject 
as a serious affront an insinuation that he often acted idly, or with¬ 
out a purpose. It argues no presumption or discourtesy to affirm, 
that neither Mr. Huxley nor Mr. Darwin ever wrote a sentence in 
one of his published works, or ever made a scientific observation 
or experiment, except with a full and conscious intention, which is 
always successfully carried out, of thereby instructing and enter¬ 
taining his readers, or of increasing the stores of Science. 

Not only, then, are we perpetually conscious of the final causes 
of our own actions, but it cannot be maintained for a moment, that 
we are not sure that any other persons act in the same manner, 
though we actually see only what they do, and never what they 
purpose. Practically we are just as firmly convinced that other 
men act with definite purposes, as that we ourselves so act. Then 
it is legitimate, it is even a strictly scientific, mode of reasoning, 
from mere external phenomena, from books and apparatus, and 
scientific collections and discourses, which we can see or hear, to 
infer the final causes of them, which we cannot see or hear. Ac¬ 
cordingly, we have a right to believe that Mr. Mill and Mr. Hux¬ 
ley did not intend to assert that men never act from design, but 
only that no other mind in the universe, except that of man, and 
perhaps of the lower animals, ever acts with a purpose. They 
simply meant to say, for example, that the structure of a telescope 




positivism. 277 

does, but that of the human eye does not, afford good scientific 
evidence of design. 

Here issue is joined. This is the question, and this is the whole 
question. It need not be theological; it does not necessarily 
concern the being of a God. The purpose, which we believe to be 
abundantly indicated in external nature, is not necessarily divine, 
the purpose of an infinite, omniscient, and all-perfect Being. We 
do not need to prove that the contrivance is perfect; for, in truth, 
even the human eye is not a perfect organ of vision, nor the 
human hand a perfect means of grasping objects and providing for 
our physical wants. But the question is, whether there is any 
contrivance, any indication of a purpose, any good evidence of the 
presence of mind in the universe other than the mind of man, even 
though that other mind, so far as we can see, be put forth only to 
a finite and limited extent, or in an imperfect manner. It may 
even be an unconscious mind, an inferior agent of a higher power, 
working unwittingly, like the iustinct of animals, towards a pur¬ 
pose of which it is not distinctly aware. 

This was the supposition of Dr. Cudworth, in his hypothesis of 
a Plastic Nature. This is also the doctrine, maintained on purely 
physical grounds, by Mr. J. J. Murphy, in his able and scientific 
work on “ Habit and Intelligence.” It is stoutly advocated, more¬ 
over, exclusively on the principles of inductive reasoning and 
from the evidence of sensible facts, by Yon Hartmann, who does 
not believe in the existence of a God. This German philosopher 
enumerates no less than thirteen peculiar arrangements in the 
structure of the human eye, all of which are requisite to keep up 
the power of distinct vision ; and he calculates mathematically, on 
the doctrine of chances, the probability of these thirteen being 
united by the operation of physical laws alone, without the inter¬ 
vention anywhere of a mental or final cause. Assuming the prob¬ 
ability that each one of these arrangements, taken separately, 
might be developed from the material conditions of embryonic life, 
to be as high on the average as .9, — “a probability which very 
little even of our most trustworthy knowledge possesses,” — still 
the probability that all these conditions united are so produced is 
only .9 13 = .254. Hence the probability that a mental or Final 
Cause must be assumed, to satisfy all these conditions taken •together, 
equals .746, or nearly three fourths; that is, the odds are three to 
one in favor of a Final Cause. But in truth, the probability of each 
arrangement taken singly does not exceed .25, or at most, .5 ; and 
the resulting decimal for the union of the whole thirteen is then, 


278 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


in the one case, .9999985, and in the other, .99988, which is virtual 
certainty. Hence, the dogmatic a priori assumption of the fol¬ 
lowers of Hume and Comte, that “ final causes are unknown and 
inscrutable to us,” so that even the search after them is fruitless, a 
mei’e chase of a “ favorite will-o’-the-wisp,” appears eminently un¬ 
scientific and illogical. 

Moreover, the Positivist fails to see that, by prohibiting the 
study of final causes, he destroys the only means of supporting his 
vehement denial of the freedom of the human will. The Necessi¬ 
tarian doctrine rests almost exclusively upon the assumption, that 
every volition whatsoever is inevitably determined to be what it is 
through the action of motives upon the character of the agent. 
We cannot act, it is said, without a motive; and, the motives being 
the same, the corresponding actions could not be different from 
what they are. Now, what are these “ motives? ” Are they not 
the purposes for which we act, the results which we intend to 
accomplish, the objects which we have in view ? Hence, if man 
does not act from design, intending to gratify the strongest motive, 
it must be that his will is free, since no other restraint upon it is 
even conceivable. 

Before proceeding to the other half of the Positivist doctrine, 
it will be well to point out that distinction between Efficient and 
Final Causes, which is clearly stated both by Aristotle and Kant. 
In the case of production by an Efficient Cause, the parts precede 
the whole; the movement of a point, for instance, generates suc¬ 
cessively the several portions of a line, before it completes the line. 
But in the case of production as directed by a Final Cause, the 
conception of the whole must precede that of the parts. The in¬ 
ventor, for example, cannot fashion the parts of a machine, before 
he clearly conceives how they will work when put together so as 
to constitute the whole. As Aristotle says, the whole must neces¬ 
sarily be earlier than the part; for if the whole be broken up, the 
foot will no longer properly be a foot, nor the hand a hand, except 
in name, as when we speak of an iron hand. The Efficient Cause, 
therefore, creates the whole from the parts ; the Final Cause pro¬ 
duces the parts from the whole. For the whole thing is itself the 
purpose or end in view, and, therefore, the conception of it must 
determine a priori every part which is to be contained in it, as 
necessary for its construction. This is so even in a machine, which 
is a work of human art. But in one of nature’s organisms, this cor¬ 
relation of all the parts with each other, and of each and all of them 
with the whole, is far more perfect and exact. Here, not only does 


POSITIVISM. 


279 


each part exist only through all tlie others, and for the sake of the 
others and the whole, as their Effect, and as the purpose to be ac¬ 
complished by them, but each one is a Cause and an organ for pro¬ 
ducing those others and the whole. In this respect, a living body 
infinitely surpasses any machine of man’s device ; for it is not only 
an organized, but a self-organizing , contrivance. In a clock, for in¬ 
stance, each wheel is a means of moving all the other wheels, but 
not a cause producing the wheels which it moves ; and still less is 
one clock a cause producing other clocks, through selecting fit 
material and organizing it for clock-purposes. A mere machine 
has only a moving power. But an organized living thing has also 
a plastic or formative power ; it fashions and animates the very 
parts by which it is itself built up and maintained in being. Nay, 
more; not merely is it self-creating and self-maintaining, but it 
propagates and continues the race or species to which it belongs. 
Therefore, argues Kant, an organized being cannot be explained 
as mere mechanism, or as the result simply of a moving force. 

Though it would be a great stretch of imagination, and one 
which certainly will never be realized in fact, we may perhaps 
suppose a clock to be so ingeniously fashioned, that it should be a 
means of multiplying itself, that is, of producing other clocks. But 
w T e cannot imagine one to be so contrived as to be self-formed, 
— both self-producing and self-sustaining, — at once building up 
its own parts, and built up by them, — digesting and fashioning its 
own materials, and so putting them together as to constitute itself 
as one whole. Yet this is precisely what is done by every living, 
organism, in its process of what is called “ self-development ” from 
a minute and seemingly structureless germ up to its adult state. 
Mere mechanism, as a means of carrying out a process thus intri¬ 
cate and self-involved, is utterly inconceivable ; and the Positivist 
who dreams of it as an agency adequate to produce such results, is 
either incapable of thinking clearly, or manifests illimitable credul¬ 
ity- 

The remaining portion of the Positivist doctrine, that Efficient 
Causes also are “ unknown and inscrutable to us,” is as indefensible 
as the portion which precedes it; but it opens so broad a field for 
discussion that it cannot be fully considered here. Enough may 
be briefly said, however, to refute the assertion. Here, again, the 
latent fallacy is the implied assumption, that what mere Physical 
Science cannot make known is thereby forever excluded from the 
domain of human knowledge. Efficient causes, we admit, are not 
patent to the senses. Nobody ever has discovered, in the external 


280 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


universe, merely by observation through the senses, the nexus which 
so binds two events together, that the production of one of them 
must be followed by the occurrence of the other; and no compe¬ 
tent observer nowadays even dreams that such a discovery, so 
made, will ever be possible. Sense takes cognizance only of the 
events themselves, and of their sequences in time ; it cannot even 
testify that these sequences are absolutely invariable, but only that 
they have been found invariable so far as experience has extended. 
And experience must always come immeasurably short of the in¬ 
finite wealth of things. But while the Empiricist thus loudly pro¬ 
claims his nescience, his inability to find an Efficient Cause, I be¬ 
lieve he never really doubted, in his secret and instinctive thought, 
that such a cause exists, — never even doubted that no event 
whatever, no change in the outward universe, ever did take place, 
or ever can take place, without just such a Cause. Tell even a 
young child, that the chair has just fallen down, or the pane of glass 
has been broken, without a Cause, understanding thereby a true 
Efficient Cause, and, if he knows the meaning of your words, he will 
either laugh in your face, or think that you are making game of 
him. And this childish but irresistible conviction, not founded on 
experience, but antedating all experience, can never be thoroughly 
eradicated from the mind of the grown man by any alleged science 
or nescience. And it is just this primitive convictiou, though 
covered up and perverted by false theory and a wrong use of lan¬ 
guage, which enables the Empiricist to declare, as he does, with 
absolute certitude, that nothing can take place except in strict 
accordance with Physical Law. Mere experience knows nothing 
of what can be ; it knows only what is, and what has been. 

Even if mere experience could determine the sequence in time 
of any two events to be absolutely invariable, (which it cannot 
do,) it is very easy to show that such “ inseparable concomitancy ” 
is not what either the man of Science, or the vulgar, mean by 
“ efficient causation.” If A is known only as the invariable ante¬ 
cedent of B, then A is only a sign or herald, which leads us to ex¬ 
pect that B will happen ; as, for instance, just before the spring 
equinox, the clock striking six in the morning is the event which 
leads us to expect immediate sunrise. This is only the causa cog- 
noscendi , or the reason why I know that something will happen. 
But it certainly is not the causa fiendi, the Efficient Cause, that 
which makes the thing happen, whether it is expected or not, and 
whether it happens on one occasion or another. 

Now the problem exists, whether men have yet solved it or not. 


POSITIVISM. 


281 


This is a case in which even the vulgar know the meaning of the 
words employed, just as well as the philosopher does, and perhaps 
somewhat better, if the philosopher is a little blinded by a pre¬ 
conceived theory. In common with the vulgar, I know precisely 
what I mean, when I ask, What makes that phenomenon happen, 
or what is its Efficient Cause? even though I cannot answer the 
question thus asked. Then I know what Efficient Cause means; 
and this knowledge either came to me from experience, in which 
case I have actually had either external or internal experience of 
such a Cause, or there is some knowledge which is not empirical. 
Either horn of the dilemma confutes the Positivists. 

I believe that this knowledge of Efficient Causation comes from 
internal experience. When, with a conscious exertion of my 
mental, and all my muscular strength, I push against the wall of 
the house, I know that I am putting forth force or power, and 
that such force is essentially causative, or necessarily efficient, 
even though it be not sufficient to produce all the effect desired, 
and therefore, so far as my senses testify, the wall does not in the 
least give way. In this case, my effort is certainly not made 
known to me merely as an antecedent event; for it has no con- 
% sequent. No visible effect follows; the wall still stands. And 
yet I know that this effort was essentially an Efficient Cause, 
and, therefore, that it must have been followed by some effect, 
must have tended to make the wall give way, even though this 
effect was imperceptible to sense. 

How this first knowledge, this earliest idea, of Efficient Causa¬ 
tion subsequently passes over into an irresistible conviction of the 
Law of Causality, that is, into an absolute and imperative belief, 
that no change whatever can take place in the external uni¬ 
verse without an efficient cause, is a question which need not de¬ 
tain us here. Probably it could not be fully answered without 
setting forth a complete system of metaphysics. As we have seen, 
it is the question which first suggested Kant’s whole “ Critique of 
Pure Reason.” 

The Positivists fail to see, what now appears obvious enough, 
that their doctrine of nescience so narrows the domain and restricts 
the processes of Physical Science itself, as to incapacitate it for the 
exercise of its functions, and to discredit as illegitimate many of 
its conclusions hitherto supposed to be irrefragable. According to 
their logic, our investigations must be strictly limited to phenom¬ 
ena attested by the evidence of the senses, and to what Mr. J. S 
Mill calls “ the strictly legitimate operation of inferring, from an 


282 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


observed effect, the existence, in time past, of a cause similar to 
that by which we know it to be produced in all cases in which we 
have had actual experience of its origin.” But if this is a correct 
statement of the logic of inductive science, the undulatory theory 
of light must be abandoned as a baseless and untenable hypoth¬ 
esis. For the ether, the vibrations of which are needed for the 
transmission of the light to our eyes, and which is supposed to be 
widely diffused through space, extending at least as far beyond 
the remotest visible star as the distance between that star and our 
earth, is not only absolutely imperceptible to sense, but is wholly 
unlike any other substance with which we are acquainted. It is 
not merely invisible and intangible ; but, so far as is yet known, it 
has not inertia enough to retard in the slightest degree the motion 
of the lightest body passing through it. According to the latest 
form of the atomic theory, its molecules do not attract, but mutu¬ 
ally repel, each other; and its vibrations are transmitted without 
stay or hindrance through the densest transparent bodies. What 
is this ether ? It must be something ; for there cannot be vibra¬ 
tions where there is nothing to vibrate. It cannot be material ; 
for it does not gravitate, it has no inertia, and it does not, so far 
as we know, exclude matter from the space occupied by itself. It 
cannot be mind; for it is extended, and it affords not the slightest 
trace of perception or consciousness. Then it must be a tertium 
quid, something between matter and mind ; and as such, it is quite 
as incognizable and inconceivable as the Infinite and the Absolute. 
Its existence is inferred solely from its effects, and from analogy 
with the air and other vibrating substances which are the vehicle 
of sound ; — an analogy fainter and more remote than that between 
the human and the Divine Mind. Let the Positivist prove to us, 
on his own principles, if he can, that we may legitimately assume 
the existence of this ether, and still deny the being of a God. 

Another specimen of the logic of the Positivists may be taken 
from their attempts to base the conclusions of a crass materialism 
upon the assumed identity of certain chemical changes, which are 
supposed to take place in the substance of the nerves, with the 
states of consciousness which are so far attendant upon them as to 
be manifested at the same moment. I have already quoted Mr. 
Herbert Spencer’s assertion, that these two classes of phenomena 
are nothing but “ the inner and outer faces of the same change ; ” 
and consequently, that in truth there are not two classes of them, 
but only one, since these changes, if viewed “ on their outsides,” 
appear as chemical phenomena, but if we regard them “ from their 


POSITIVISM. 


283 


insides,” they are phenomena of consciousness. What evidence is 
there of the truth of this assertion ? On what ground does he 
maintain the identity of two classes of phenomena which are so 
radically unlike that they have not a single feature in common ? 
The one class can be viewed only through the external senses, 
under the microscope or in the test-tubes of the chemist, and can 
be expressed only as physical changes, in terms of extension and 
motion; consciousness as such knows nothing of them. The 
other class are absolutely imperceptible to sense, are not extended, 
do not move, have no relation to space, so that it is sheer nonsense 
to talk of their “ insides ” or “ outsides,” and can be cognized only 
as successive states of the indivisible and identical Ego of con¬ 
sciousness. What trace of similarity can be pointed out between 
conscious Thought on the one hand, and the tumbling down and 
building up of molecules from their primary atoms in the brain on 
the other ? Dissimilar in every respect, it is hard to believe that 
the assertion of their identity is made in sober earnest. 

For the question here at issue, the concomitance of the two 
phenomena proves nothing. The fact that a certain physical 
event is the antecedent, and a certain mental state is its invariable 
consequent, may prove that the former is the (physical) cause 
of the latter; but it certainly does not prove the identity of 
the one with the other. Nay, by denominating one the antecedent, 
and the other the consequent, it expressly negatives the supposi¬ 
tion of their identity. Nobody doubts that a vibration of the air 
or some other medium, is the invariable antecedent of the sensation 
of sound; but any one would very properly be laughed at who 
should seriously maintain, that the quivering motion of the air is 
the sensation. Then bring the two phenomena one step nearer to 
each other. Assume, as Mr. Spencer and other materialists do 
without a scintilla of evidence, that certain molecular changes in 
the substance of the nerves always precede or accompany any 
change in consciousness. Still, the assertion that such molecular 
disturbance is the conscious thought which it accompanies, is quite 
as absurd as the former one, that the quivering motion is the sen¬ 
sation. The two things are entirely incongruous ; you might as 
well say that a dance of atoms is an epic poem. 

But the argument may be carried much farther. The great 
simplicity and uniformity of molecular action in any substance, and 
of all other merely physical change, are wholly incompatible with 
the infinite range and diversity of human thought. All physical 
shange is resolvable exclusively into modes of motion. Fast or 


284 


MODEKN PHILOSOPHT. 


slow, continuous or reciprocating, minute or grand, in one direc¬ 
tion or another, weak or strong, it is still motion, and nothing but 
motion. The very molecular action, which Mr. Spencer here re¬ 
fers to, is only a process constantly repeated of setting up bricks, 
and knocking them down again. It is a mere dance of atoms, and 
one which has by no means an intricate figure or any considerable 
variety of steps. It is as plain as a pikestaff; “ up and down the 
middle, cross hands, and swing your partners.” These are the 
phenomena, and all the phenomena, as viewed “ on their out¬ 
sides ”; and the very same phenomena, Mr. Spencer tells us, 
regarded “ from their insides,” are John Milton composing the 
“Paradise Lost,” and Isaac Newton meditating his immortal 
“ Principia.” Should we even grant to the materialist, then, what 
cannot be admitted for a moment, that his theory sufficiently ac¬ 
counts for that vague abstraction, that ghost of a reality, which we 
call thought in general, it certainly does not afford any explanation 
whatever of the only phenomena really needing explanation ; 
namely, the infinite compass and diversity of the particular 
thoughts which actually succeed each other in the consciousness of 
any one thinker. I fail to imagine how any dance of atoms in the 
materialist’s brain, when “ viewed from the inside,” should be so 
illogical as to suppose that “ thought in general,” which is one and 
the same in all brains, and under all circumstances, is still identical 
with “ particular thought,” which is never the same in any two 
minds, or in any one mind at two successive moments. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of 
Sufficient Reason. The Freedom of the Will. 

In the preceding chapter, and elsewhere, we have briefly looked 
at the great question respecting the Freedom of the Will in a few 
of its aspects, reserving a complete discussion of the subject for a 
later opportunity, which has now arrived. As a means of facili¬ 
tating a separate and thorough examination of this problem, I will 
present here a compendious view of Schopenhauer’s doctrine re¬ 
specting it, as contained in his earliest publication, entitled “ The 
Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.” This little 
book, one of the ablest and most original, as it seems to me, of all 
his works, was the Thesis which he presented when he took his 
Doctor’s degree, in 1813, at the age of twenty-six years. Many 
of the conclusions which it seeks to establish appear unfounded, 
and the reasoning in support of them is sophistical; but they are 
worked out with great acuteness and ingenuity, and were after¬ 
wards made the basis of that system of philosophy, the exposition 
and defence of which occupied the remainder of his life. The 
character of this philosophy, and of its author, will be considered 
at length in a subsequent portion of this book. Here, we have 
only to examine his masterly analysis of the great Principle first 
enunciated by Leibnitz as the foundation of all science and all 
philosophy. 

The broadest and most universal expression of the Principle of 
Sufficient Reason is, that no phenomenon can exist or take place, 
and no assertion can be valid, without a Sufficient Reason why it 
is so rather than otherwise. The enunciation of it may be made 
more clear and precise thus: In the phenomenal world, that is, 
in the universe as it appears to us, every object and every event, 
including even every judgment, volition, and affection of the mind, 
is determined, or made what it is, through the relations in which it 
stands to other phenomena; so that, if we knew those relations 
thoroughly, we could determine a priori the existence and the 


286 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


character of the phenomenal object or event, the latter being ap¬ 
prehended as the Consequent, and the determinative nature of 
these relations as its ground or Reason. This supreme or ultimate 
principle of all phenomenal existence is expanded by Logic into 
these two fundamental laws: If you affirm the Reason, you must 
also affirm the Consequent, as inevitably going along with it; and 
if you deny the Consequent, you must also deny the Reason. But 
from denying the Reason, or from affirming the Consequent, no 
conclusion follows; because the Consequent may follow from some 
other Reason than the one in question. 

The principle of Sufficient Reason may further be regarded as an 
expression of the truth, that, in the universe as it appears to us, no 
phenomenon whatever is isolated or independent; not only, through 
the universality of the laws of Space and Time, does it stand in 
necessary relations of coexistence and succession with other phe¬ 
nomena, but it is also necessarily apprehended as determining, and 
determined by, some of these relations. All objects and events, 
regarded either as coexisting at one time, or as succeeding each 
other throughout all time, and so conceived as occupying immensity 
and eternity, are thus, to our apprehension at least, firmly bound 
together as one whole, every part being necessarily what, where, 
and when it is, through its relations of mutual dependence, or reci¬ 
procity of action, with every other part. This is an a priori prin¬ 
ciple, as it is universally and necessarily true; it is not derived 
from experience, but must be presupposed before experience is pos¬ 
sible. Thus, with regard to every phenomenon, we are both en¬ 
titled to ask the question, and we are necessarily urged to ask it, 
Why is it so ? The whole business of science is to answer this 
question, in which it is, of course, assumed that every thing must 
have a Ground or Reason for its existence, and that it is itself a 
Ground or Reason, on which other things must depend as its Con¬ 
sequent. Then the universal meaning of the Principle, — that is, of 
the question Why, — is, that every thing is by means of some other 
thing. Our only idea of necessity, says Schopenhauer, the only 
meaning of the woi'd, is derived from this relation of a Ground or 
Reason to its Consequent. Hence, all phenomena are necessary ; 
each must have its Ground, and this being given, the Consequent 
must follow. All other relations of phenomena with each other are 
contingent; they are merely accidental juxtapositions or coexist¬ 
ences of some with others, which, however frequently repeated, still 
appear casual, and do not even suggest the idea of a necessary 
union one with the other, until we begin to suspect that one is 
the Ground or Reason of the other. 


SCHOPENHAUER’S FOURFOLD ROOT. 


287 


Herein, and therefore at the outset of the discussion, I must 
dissent entirely from the doctrine taught by Schopenhauer. Only 
in the external and material universe, as it seems to me, and iu 
demonstrative reasoning, as in pure mathematics, is the connection 
of Ground with Consequent a necessary union. In the realm of 
mind, on the contrary, and in all cases of merely probable reason¬ 
ing, embracing most of the conclusions by which man regulates his 
ordinary conduct, Reasons are not strong enough to necessitate 
their Consequents, but the connection between them is, avowedly, 
only contingent or hypothetical. This connection is not equally 
strong iu different minds, or even in the same mind at different 
times. The facts and arguments, which convince me now, may 
have no effect upon my neighbor’s opinion, and may perhaps seem 
inconclusive to me also at another time, and under different cir¬ 
cumstances. Schopenhauer really begs the question at the outset, 
against the doctrine of the Freedom of the Will, by arbitrarily lim¬ 
iting the meaning of the Leibnitzian axiom, so as to exclude all 
cases of probable reasoning, though the greater part of human life 
is directed by reasoning of that character. Certainly I have a 
Ground for my conduct, when I decline a hazardous investment of 
my property ; but it is not a conclusive or absolute Ground, for I 
may hesitate long before making up my mind. But we return to 
the German philosopher’s exposition of the subject. 

In “The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,” 
Schopenhauer analyzes this highest Principle of thought and phe¬ 
nomenal existence into four distinct species, to which he gives the 
respective names of (1) the causa jiendi , or the Ground of 
Change; (2) the causa cognoscendi , or the Ground of Knowledge, 
that is, the Reason for every affirmation; (3) the causa essendi , or 
the Ground of Being, such as the Reason for the determinate posi¬ 
tion of every point in Space and of every moment in Time; and 
(4) the causa agendi , or the Ground of Volition and Action in its 
subjective aspect; that is, Motivation, or determination through 
Motives. Several of these, as we shall hereafter see, he subdi¬ 
vides into inferior species. 

The first of these four Roots, the causa Jiendi , or Ground of 
Change, is the Principle of Causality as ordinarily understood, 
Thereby we assume that no event in the material universe, that is, 
no change in the attributes of matter, is possible, except through 
the action of some other phenomenon, conceived as cause or force, 
which furnishes a Reason for such change. The existence of Mat¬ 
ter does not depend upon this Principle; for its existence, accord- 


288 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ing to Schopenhauer, is merely a manifestation of the one univer¬ 
sal force or Will, which, because it is the Ding an sich , being per 
se, or absolute being, does not exist in relation to anything else, 
and is therefore absolutely free, and not subject to the Principle of 
Sufficient Reason. But any change in any attribute of matter, 
any alteration of its state, as when, from being liquid, it becomes 
solid, from being up, it falls down, from being heavy, it becomes 
light, etc., is a mere phenomenon of sense, and as such, we know 
a priori that it is necessarily related to some other, immediately 
preceding, change, as its cause. I say, related to some other change 
immediately preceding ; for as this change, say, the explosion of 
gunpowder, takes place now, the other change, bringing a spark 
near it, must have occurred immediately before, or the explosion 
would have taken place earlier. The fact that the existence of 
Matter does not require a cause, for it is unchangeable, while any 
alteration of its attributes must depend on some preceding change 
in something else, we commonly express by saying, that change 
never affects the substance of Matter, but only its states' or condi¬ 
tions. Burn hydrogen in oxygen, for instance, and water is the 
result; but the substance and its weight remain unaltered. It 
did appear as oxygen and hydrogen, uncombined, aeriform, and 
voluminous; it now appears as water, the two gases being com¬ 
bined, condensed, and so made liquid. But it is still essentially 
the same thing, the same substance that it was before, and the 
chemist can easily change it back again into that former state. 

We have, then, two physical laws which determine and limit 
the application of the Principle of Causality to inorganic matter: 
the first is the perdurability of Substance, and the second is the 
law of Inertia. According to the latter, any state or condition of 
a body, whether of rest or motion, must remain unchanged, and 
without either increase or diminution, throughout all eternity, 
except some Cause appears, through which that state may be modi¬ 
fied. Both of these laws are known a priori, since neither of 
them can be either suggested or proved by experience. In like 
manner, says Schopenhauer, the other primitive forces of nature, 
or physical laws, as they are more properly termed, such as gravity, 
electricity, cohesion, chemical affinity, and the like, are conceived 
as exempt from change, as everywhere present, and as inexhaust¬ 
ible. They are of the nature of occult causes, or ultimate facts, 
and therefore they lie outside of the domain of the Principle 
of Sufficient Reason. The questions, why matter gravitates, why 
iron is attracted by the magnet, admit no answer, except by saying 


SCHOPENHAUER’S FOURFOLD ROOT. 289 

that it is their nature thus to act. The action of these primitive 
forces is just as inexplicable as the perdurability of Substance. 

Void time and space, as mere forms of the internal and external 
sense, exert no efficient causation, make no impression upon our 
bodily organs, and so are not perceptible by sense. It is only as 
occupied or filled by the attributes of Matter, such as impenetra¬ 
bility, color, etc., that they become perceptible ; hence, Matter may 
be defined to be the perceptibility of time and space, and the link 
of connection which binds these two together. Time is perceived 
only through the changes of state and attribute which take place 
in time; space is perceived only through the persistence or un¬ 
changeableness of the material Substance which occupies space. 
Thus, Matter is conceived only as a force occupying space, capable 
of affecting our external senses, and susceptible, in successive 
moments of time, of change in its attributes, which are its mani¬ 
festations to sense, but not in its Substance. This is the simplest 
definition which can be given of Matter as such, or in an inorganic 
state, that is, as not modified by the phenomena of life. And in 
regard to inorganic matter only, are we able to apply the two 
axioms of physical causation, namely, that action and reaction are 
equal, and that cause and effect are manifested in exact proportion 
to each other. 

But Matter exists also in an organic state, in two other forms, 
as constituting or manifesting either Vegetable or Animal life. 
Living vegetable organisms, and those portions of the animal or¬ 
ganism which have merely an unconscious and vegetative life and 
office, such as the functions of nutrition, assimilation, and growth, 
are partially withdrawn from the influence of the purely Physical 
Causation which reigns alone in inorganic substance, and are subject 
to such Stimuli as food, moisture, light, and heat. In regard to the 
influence of these Stimuli, the law of the equality of action and 
reaction is not applicable, and that of the proportionality of the 
effect to the cause does not hold true. Thus, a certain quantity 
both of food, moisture, and warmth is an essential condition of 
vegetable life and growth; but the growth is not increased in 
exact proportion to the quantity thus supplied; and if the amount 
furnished exceed a given limit, not only more growth does not 
result, but the plant dies. In like manner, animal life, which is 
distinguished by its capacity for sensation from merely vegetable 
existence, is subject to still another form of causation, that of 
Motives. The action of every animal, man himself included, may 
be controlled more or less by offering to it certain external in- 
19 


290 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ducements. Every animal has certain primitive impulses and de¬ 
sires, such as the sexual passion, emulation, the love of society, the 
instinct of self-preservation, and the like; and most of its actions 
result from the felt presence or absence of the means of gratifying 
these desires. For reasons which will appear further on, I speak 
here only of what may be called the objective aspect of motives, 
or the presence of external inducements. 

Stimulation, or the capacity of being affected by such external 
agencies as food and light, which is the active principle of vegeta¬ 
ble life, occupies middle ground between the two others; that is, 
it constitutes the transition between Physical Causes strictly so 
called, or the principle of change in inorganic matter, and Motiva¬ 
tion, which is the active principle peculiar to animal life. As a 
stone may be made to move by jmshing or striking it, which is 
Causation in the narrowest sense, so plants may be made to grow 
by supplying them with food and heat, and the action of animals, 
man included, may be governed by holding out to them external 
inducements, as food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty 
animal, and the prospect of gaining wealth or fame to man him¬ 
self. In this last case, Motivation is, so to speak, accompanied 
and interpenetrated by knowledge ; that is, it acts through intelli¬ 
gence, and is witnessed by consciousness. A motive, in the ob¬ 
jective sense, is something which the animal knows will gratify its 
desire ; otherwise, it would not be a motive, and so would not 
govern its action. It avails nothing to hold out external induce¬ 
ments either to a stone or a plant, since neither of them is capable 
of knowing what would gratify its desires or tendencies, even if it 
had any such. But since Stimulation holds intermediate ground 
between the other two, its action is frequently united with theirs ; 
in plants, its action is united with that of Cause strictly so called; 
in animals, it is united with Motivation. Thus, the upward mo¬ 
tion of the sap in plants is partly determined by such Stimuli as 
heat and light, and partly by such inorganic forces, or causes in 
the narrowest sense, as the laws of hydraulics and the capillary 
action of narrow tubes. Again, certain actions in an animal’s 
body are wholly voluntary, and so wholly produced by Motivation, 
while certain others, as involuntary, are produced by Stimuli, or even 
exclusively by inorganic force, or again, by a union of two or 
more of those modes of causation. Thus, the winking of the eye¬ 
lids is most commonly involuntary, being stimulated by tears or 
bright light; but is sometimes voluntary, or governed by motives. 
So likewise respiration, and the act of swallowing, partly volun- 


SCHOPENHAUER’S FOURFOLD ROOT. 


291 


tary and partly involuntary, are the conjoint results of pure Stimuli 
and Motives. The circulation of the blood is due to the joint 
action of Stimuli and purely inorganic forces. 

Because the actions of an animal, so far as they are voluntary, 
depend on Motivation, which is conditioned and limited by knowl¬ 
edge, the proper characteristic of animal life, says Schopenhauer, 
is intelligence. An animal may be defined as a living organism 
which knows. Both Physical Causes and Stimuli, before they can 
become grounds of action or change, must be in actual contact 
with the substances to be affected by them. But as knowledge is 
independent of the relations of space, Motivation can act from a 
distance. The conduct of the lower animals can be influenced, at 
any moment, by objects placed anywhere within the range of their 
senses. Indeed, leaving out the obscure phenomena of instinct, 
and the exceptional cases of conduct induced by habit and training, 
the Motivation of brutes is properly limited to what is within the 
range of their senses for the moment. What is merely animal 
lives only in and for what is present to it in time and space ; the 
absent, whether past or future, is equivalent to the non-existent. 
But man’8 intellect has a twofold operation, and is capable not 
only of intuitive, but of abstract knowledge, which is not limited 
to what is present, and is not necessarily directed by what is near¬ 
est or most conspicuous, as an object of aversion or desire. Man 
is capable of weighing motives against each other ; he can repress 
the impulse of the moment, till ,the voice of prudence has had time 
to be heard, and till he has estimated the comparative desirable¬ 
ness of what is distant and future. But this distinction between 
man and brute will be further considered, when we come to treat 
of the causa agendi, or subjective Motivation. 

Observe that Schopenhauer’s analysis here points directly to 
one conclusion, which he did not anticipate, and would not have 
welcomed. The doctrine that all living organisms are mere autom¬ 
ata, so that all the movements and changes taking place in them 
can be explained merely on mechanical principles, is unfounded, 
because it leaves wholly out of view the radical distinctions now 
pointed out between the three forms of the causa fiendi. Stimuli 
cannot be put in the same class with Physical Causes strictly so 
called ; for the law of proportionality between cause and effect 
does not hold good in respect to them. Aud still less can Motiva¬ 
tion be explained as Mechanism, since it operates from any dis¬ 
tance, and only through the intervention of knowledge. 

Agreeably to what has now been said, the first of the four Roots 


292 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, namely, the causa jiendi , the 
Ground of Change in the condition and attributes of Matter, may 
be subdivided into three perfectly distinct species, as follows: — 

1. Physical Causation in the narrowest sense, controlling all 
change in inorganic matter. 

2. Stimulation, controlling the growth of plants and the exer¬ 
cise of all vegetative functions. 

3. Objective Motivation, controlling from a distance the outward 
acts of animals by external inducements. 

The consideration of the second Root of the Principle of Suffi¬ 
cient Reason carries us over from the realm of Matter to that of 
Mind. Every judgment or mental affirmation must have a Ground 
or Reason why it is made, or held to be true. This Reason, the 
causa cognoscendi, is plainly distinguishable from the causa Jiendi , 
and, in a certain respect, is the opposite of it, as the relation of 
cause and effect is here frequently reversed from what it was in 
the former case. What, in the case of physical causation, was effect 
now becomes cause; that is, it becomes the causa cognoscendi , or 
the reason why I know that a physical cause has been in operation. 
Thus, the rise of the mercury is the causa cognoscendi, the reason 
or cause of my knowing that the heat is increased; but in respect 
to the causa Jiendi, this rise of the mercury is the effect, and the 
increase of heat is the cause. As a material phenomenon, heat is 
the cause, the rise of the mercury is the effect; as a mental phe¬ 
nomenon, the rise of the mercury is the cause, and my knowledge 
of the increased heat is the effect. All this is obvious enough; 
and we have only to consider Schopenhauer’s subdivision of the 
causas cognoscendi into four species. He designates the first of 
these species as logical, since a proposition may be affirmed to be 
true because it is a valid inference from another proposition pre¬ 
viously established; the second as empirical, because I may kuow 
from experience, that is, through perception by sense, that iron is 
hard, the sky is blue, and the like; the third as transcendental, be¬ 
cause the very nature of the human mind, its a priori laws or in¬ 
nate principles, preceding and transcending all experience, assure 
mo that space is indestructible and infinite, and that time flows on 
in a perfectly uniform lapse forever; and the fourth as metalogical, 
consisting solely of the three fundamental axioms of pure Thought, 
those of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, on 
which all legitimate thinking depends. 

Schopenhauer is entitled to the credit of being the first to point 
out the third Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and to 


SCHOPENHAUER’S FOURFOLD ROOT. 


293 

enumerate the characteristics, hitherto unnoticed, by which it is 
distinguished from both the first and the second. The cases thus 
far mentioned are not all those in which we are entitled to ask, Why 
is it so ? that is, to demand a Reason. If asked, why the three 
sides of this triangle are equal, the answer is, because the three 
angles are equal. Is this the assignment of an ordinary Physical 
Cause, or causa Jiendi f By no means ; for in this case, there is 
no change , no beginning to be, and therefore we do not seek for 
any force, the application of which has had efficacy to produce a 
change. Neither is it a causa cognoscendi ; for the equality of the 
angles is not merely a Reason why we know the equality of the 
sides, but whether we know it or not, the equality of the former 
necessitates the equality of the latter. These two things, these two 
determinations of existence, must have gone together forever, 
though there were no mind in the universe to cognize their union. 
The being of one involves and necessitates the being of the other. 
This third Root of the Principle is appropriately denominated by 
Schopenhauer the causa essendi, the Ground or Reason of Being. 
It determines the relations to each other of all Numbers, that is, 
of all succession in time, and of all Positions in space; and there¬ 
fore is the foundation of arithmetic and geometry, that is, of all 
pure mathematics. Three is one half of six, and the square root 
of nine, on account of the respective relations of three, six, and 
nine, to unity, which is the foundation of number, as it is the start¬ 
ing point for determining succession in time. In like manner, every 
position in space is inevitably determined to be where it is, through 
its coexistent relations with at least three other points in space, not 
in the same plane. There is a Ground or Reason, therefore, for 
every truth in pure mathematics; and it is neither the causa jiendi , 
why it became so, for it never did become, but always was so; nor 
the causa cognoscendi , for it determines not merely our knowledge 
of the fact, but the very being of the fact, and is consequently 
named the causa essendi. 

Schopenhauer maintains that the fourth Root of the Principle is 
found in Motivation as viewed in its subjective aspect, that is, in 
the relations of volition to the desire, passion, or motive, by which 
it is inevitably determined to be what it is. Of course, he is a 
strict Necessitarian. As under the third subdivision of the first 
Root, Motivation in its objective aspect, he held the outward con¬ 
duct of all animals, man himself included, to be irresistibly de¬ 
termined by external inducements, so in this fourth Root, he con¬ 
siders the phenomenal manifestations of will, that is, particular 


294 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


volitions, to be just as necessarily determined by the prevailing 
motive as any physical event is by its efficient cause. Given the 
predominant desire of the moment, he says, and the volition must 
be what it is, and must instantly follow; otherwise, there would be 
a phenomenon without any sufficient Ground or Reason. 

This whole analysis is summarily presented in the following 
scheme. 

Principle of Sufficient Reason. 


1. Causa Jiendi. 


2 . Causa cognoscendi. 


3 . Causa essencli. 

4 . Causa agendi. 


( 1. Principle of Causality .... Change. 

) 2. Principle of Stimulation . . . Growth. 

( 3. Principle of Motivation (objective) Outward act. 

f 1. Logical.Inference. 

j 2. Empirical...... Experience through the senses. 

1 3. Transcendental (synthetic) A priori truths. 

[ 4. Metalogical (analytic) . . Three axioms of thought. 

( 1. In Time.Number. 

j 2. In Space.Position. 

Motivation (subjective) . Volition. 


But while all phenomena, including all manifestations of Will, 
whether as volitions or as outward acts, are thus inevitably de¬ 
termined or necessitated, each by its own particular Ground or 
Reason, both Kant and Schopenhauer maintain that the Will in 
itself, or the Intelligible Character, as it is not a phenomenon, but 
is being per se, or absolute being, is not- so determined; it has no 
Ground or Reason, and is therefore absolutely free. Space and 
time, as we have learned from Kant, are only laws or forms of 
phenomenal being, that is, of what appears; never of the ding 
an sick, or being as it really is. This, as existent out of space 
and time, has no plurality, but is absolutely one, so that there is 
nothing else which can act upon or determine it. As having no 
duration in time, it is not subject to change, aud therefore has no 
causa fiendi. As incognizable, because the intellect can know only 
phenomena or what appears, the causa cognoscendi does not enter 
into the case. As absolute, it is out of relation to any thing, even 
to any point of space or to any moment of time; and is, therefore, 
free from the causa essendi. And as to Motivation, or the causa 
agendi , that, as we have seen, affects only the particular volition, 
or the concrete act, — never the inborn character, or inmost nature 
of man and of all things. This is the essence of the universe; the 
ultimate Ground or Reason of all that appears ; the one primal 
force, which is wholly indeterminate and free, because it only acts, 
and is never acted upon. Just as change affects only the attributes 
or properties of anything, but leaves its incognizable substance un- 






SCHOPENHAUER’S FOURFOLD ROOT. 


295 


altered and unalterable, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, so 
Motivation determines only the volitions and outward acts which 
are the manifestations of that essential character which is born 
with us, and makes us what we are ;—nay, which makes the uni¬ 
verse what it is. 

Thus, again, as already remarked, having successfully traced 
any phenomenal action or change in matter up to one of the prim¬ 
itive forces in nature, that is, up to an ultimate physical law, say, 
to gravity or to heat, we never inquire farther, or ask “ Why does 
gravity or heat act thus ? ” Such a question, it is seen, would 
have no proper meaning, for it could only be answered by asserting 
the fact over again, or by saying, “ It is the nature, the very es¬ 
sence, of gravity or heat to act thus; ” that is, it is the nature of 
material particles, so far as they are affected by gravity, to tend 
towards each other, and, so far as they are affected by heat, to 
move away from each other, or to expand. We may, indeed, re¬ 
solve two or more of these physical forces, hitherto considered as 
primal, into one; we may, as has been recently done, resolve heat, 
light, electricity, magnetism, etc., into motion. But then the 
forces so resolved, of course, cease to be primal, and become de¬ 
rivative or phenomenal; and only their resultant, motion, is now 
truly primal, thus constituting the ultimate goal, at which all 
physical inquiry, all demand for a sufficient Ground or Reason, 
properly ends. The question, why motion should act thus, can be 
answered only by saying, It is the nature of motion thus to mani¬ 
fest itself. In like manner, having traced any outward act or 
particular volition of man to some primitive desire, or original 
manifestation of Will as such, say, to the desire of happiness, the 
instinct of self-preservation, or the sexual appetite, we have 
reached the ultimate Ground or Reason, and can nq longer ask 
Why? Or if the question be asked, Why is the Will so consti¬ 
tuted as to desire these things rather than their opposites ? we can 
only answer, because it is the nature or essence of Will to wish 
happiness and life rather than misery and death. Further answer 
than this can no man give. 

The same doctrine can perhaps be more clearly and explicitly 
stated in this form. Nothing in the world needs a Ground or 
Reason for its mere existence, but only for its existence now and 
here; that is, for its phenomenal manifestation in Space and 
Time. We do not ask simply, Why is it? but, Why does it happen 
now, rather than at some other time ? Why here, rather than else¬ 
where? We ask, Why does this body now fall? ard not, Why 


296 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


do bodies generally gravitate ? for we conceive that it is of the 
nature or essence of all bodies, i. e., of matter universally, to grav¬ 
itate. Nothing makes it fall; it falls of itself, spontaneously. 

We now pass to a more direct consideration of the abstruse and 
difficult problem concerning Necessity or Freewill. Old and trite 
though it be, it is still so obtrusive, and in one sense so alluring, 
that we cannot avoid the discussion, even if we would. From the 
young child, who, seeking an excuse for some fault committed 
under strong temptation, exclaims, “ I could n’t help it,” up to the 
theologian vainly attempting to reconcile divine foreknowledge 
with human freedom, the mau probably never lived whose 
thoughts have not at times stumbled on some form of this dark 
problem. Is man responsible for his conduct ? When he has 
done wrong, when he has erred or sinned, could he, by a suitable 
effort of his will, have determined to act otherwise ? If not, if 
the Necessitarian doctrine be true, then there is not merely no 
foundation either for morality or religion, but no basis either for 
divine or human law. According to this theory, vice or crime is 
inevitable, and we are no more accountable for it than for a fever 
or an earthquake. Remorse is a blunder, repentance is vain, merit 
is a mere pretence, self-improvement or reformation is impossible. 
On this doctrine, man is a plant that grows and thinks, the form 
and place of his growth, and the products of his thought, being as 
little dependent on his will or .effort, as the bark, leaves, and fruit 
of a tree are on its choice. All alike are subject to the skyey influ¬ 
ences. Food, soil, climate, — these make up the man, and deter¬ 
mine what he shall be. They make up the whole man, not merely 
his animal frame, but his life and soul, if he has any. If these 
are rich and generous, so will be the man, and his thoughts and 
actions. His moral nature is nothing, and his spiritual nature is a 
mere fiction. The laws of matter and the laws of intellect, these 
govern all, and shape our nature and destiny. And these laws are 
as permanent and uncontrollable as the laws of gravitation and 
chemical affinity. Feuerbach, in his ordinary brutal manner, sums 
up the whole doctrine in this coarse Germau pun: Der Menscli ist 
was er isst. Man is what he eats. 

The principal argument in favor of Freedom may be very briefly 
stated ; it is simply the testimony of consciousness. We know , 
for it is a fact attested alike by conscience and consciousness, that 
when two courses of action are presented to us, we are free to choose 
between them, and therefore have only ourselves to approve or 
blame for the consequences of that choice. Hence, after the con- 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


297 


sequences of our conduct have become manifest, we all feel self- 
reproach or self-gratulation, because we know that we might have 
willed differently. 

The opposite doctrine is an inference from the Principle of 
Sufficient Reason. The Necessitarian alleges that we could not 
have willed differently, because no particular volition would be 
possible, if it were not determined by some antecedent motive or 
cause to be what it is. If all the antecedent circumstances, the 
agent’s character and this motive included, should remain unchanged, 
the volition must be repeated ; otherwise, a given cause would not 
produce any effect, which is a contradiction, or there would be a 
change without a cause, which is impossible. A free volition, it is 
asserted, would be a cause of action residing in the mind, and ex¬ 
erting itself independently of motives ; that is, it would be a first 
cause ; in which case, it would be wholly indeterminate, as there 
would be no reason why this particular volition should be exerted 
rather than any other. 

Sir William Hamilton, borrowing his theory from Kant’s An¬ 
tinomies, admits this argument, and confesses that the doctrine of 
Freewill is inconceivable, because it asserts that an event, a voli¬ 
tion, takes place without a cause ; but he maintains that the op¬ 
posite doctrine, the theory of Necessity, is equally inconceivable, 
for it involves the assertion of an infinite series of causes, through 
denying the possibility of a First cause. If no event can happen, 
except it be determined to happen by some preceding event, then 
we must go on seeking such preceding events forever. The chain 
is endless; the series is infinite; and this is just as impossible 
to thought as the opposite doctrine, that there is a First cause. 
Thus, Hamilton’s view of the conflicting theories of Necessity and 
Freewill is but one application of his Philosophy of the Condi¬ 
tioned. In his opinion, both doctrines are inconceivable; but as 
they are contradictories, one of them must be true ; and therefore, 
as an inconceivability which is common to both does not disprove 
either, we must believe in Freewill, which has, what the other has 
not, the distinct testimony of consciousness in its favor. Then 
Hamilton’s conclusion is, 1 know that I am free, but I cannot con¬ 
ceive how I am free. 

Then the only reason why the Freewill doctrine is alleged to 
be inconceivable is, that it supposes volitions to originate without 
a Cause, so that they seem to be left indeterminate, since there is 
nothing to determine why we should have one volition rather than 
another. I demur to this statement, in which it is implied that no 


I 


298 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


determination is possible except through the action of an Efficient 
Cause, which, of course, determines necessarily. An advocate of 
Freewill must admit that a volition is determined without a 
Cause ; but he does not need to assert that it is determined with¬ 
out a Reason. Now motives are Reasons, and it has already been 
made evident from the analysis of the fourfold root of the Prin¬ 
ciple of Sufficient Reason, that the relation between a Reason and 
its Consequent is often entirely distinct from that between a 
Cause and its Effect. The former is merely the ratio cogno- 
scendi, that which enables one to know what has happened, or 
what he had better do ; the latter is the causa jiendi, that which 
makes the thing happen, or compels the man to move, when 
perhaps he is unwilling to stir. The former is a mere synthe¬ 
sis of thoughts ; the latter is a physical union of two things. 
Nay, as I have shown, the Reason usually is the Effect, instead 
of the Cause; for it is through the Effect, which is obvious, that 
I come to know the Cause, which is obscure. Because I per¬ 
ceive the ground is wet, therefore I know it has rained. Again, 
the relation between a Cause and its Effect is fixed and inva¬ 
riable, while that between a Reason and its Consequent is in some 
degree changeable and contingent. A particular Cause must have 
just this Effect, exactly proportioned to it, and no other; but a 
Reason only sways or influences the choice, without inevitably 
leading it to any one conclusion. What is called the weigh¬ 
ing of motives, or estimating the comparative value of Reasons for 
different modes of conduct, is a process of the Understanding, dis¬ 
tinctly preliminary to the act of the Will or volition, and usually 
separated from it by a short but conscious interval of time. In 
any important call for action, we usually pause to make up our 
minds as to the proper course to be pursued; and the Freedom 
of which we Sre then irresistibly convinced is the direct testimony 
of consciousness at the moment, both that the final choice is in 
our power, whatever may be the comparative weight of Reasons 
for it, and also that the crowning act, or volition, which is still to 
come, may or may not follow this choice or resolution, just as we 
may decide at the last moment. 

The Necessitarian really begs the question by taking for granted 
the doctrine of the Materialist. He assumes that Mind is not 
distinct from Matter, or in other words, that there is no such 
separate and peculiar existence as Mind ; that man is only a 
machine, which is but apparently animate, and therefore that he 
falls entirely under the domain of the causa Jiendi , and moves 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


299 


only as he is moved by Physical Causes, strictly so called. If this 
Materialist theory were true, I admit that the doctrine of the 
Necessitarian would thereby be demonstrated; for I cannot even 
imagine any change taking place in Matter, except through the 
operation of some efficient Cause, whereby it is necessarily deter¬ 
mined to be what it is; and I cannot see how a Necessitarian can 
logically avoid being also a Materialist. The two doctrines re¬ 
spectively maintained by them inevitably go together. But then 
the distinction already pointed out, and which is as obvious to the 
vulgar as it is to the skilled logician and psychologist, between the 
causa fiendi and the causa cognoscendi, disappears altogether. 
There is then no difference between the Cause, which makes an 
event happen, and the Reason which merely, enables me to know, 
or inclines me to believe, that it has happened. But it seems to 
me an unquestionable and even self-evident truth, that the rela¬ 
tion between one state of consciousness and another is radically 
unlike that between one condition of any material object and a 
subsequent state of the same thing. In the latter case, the change 
from one to the other is inconceivable, except through the action 
of some determinate force or physical agency ; in the former, it is 
equally inconceivable that such force or agency should have any¬ 
thing to do with the case in hand. Ideas, states of mind, are not 
sticks or stones. They are not extended ; they are not impen¬ 
etrable ; they do not push, or strike, or block the way, except met¬ 
aphorically. As Dr. Reid bluntly expresses it, that a motive exerts 
any force or compulsion upon my will, is an assertion as meaning¬ 
less as that the motive drinks my health, or boxes my ears. 

I have already adverted to the fact, that what are called “ mo¬ 
tives,” as they are Final Causes, and not Efficient Causes, do not 
in any manner move or constrain volitions, but, at best, supply only 
direction and guidance to an impulse or effort which must origi¬ 
nate elsewhere, — which emanates in fact from the man himself, 
that is, from the self-determining power of his will. A motive is 
the consciousness of a purpose, and therefore acts only through 
the understanding, and only on the understanding. The Empiri¬ 
cist, who rejects Final Causes altogether, ought to be the last 
person to attribute constraining force to motives. 

Dr. J. H. Newman, in his “ Grammar of Assent,” has admirably 
illustrated the truth, that Assent and conduct, which is merely 
practical Assent to the Reasons for such conduct, are not necessa¬ 
rily determined by inferences, or deductions of the understanding. 
* Sometimes Assent fails, while the reasons for it, and the infer- 


300 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ential act which is the recognition of those reasons, are still pres¬ 
ent and in force. Our reasons may seem to us as strong as ever; 
yet they do not secure our Assent.” “ And as Assent sometimes 
dies out without tangible riasons sufficient to account for its failure, 
so sometimes, in spite of strong and convincing arguments, it is 
never given.” “ Again, very numerous are the cases in which good 
arguments, both really good as far as they go, and confessed by us 
to be good, nevertheless are not strong enough to incline our minds 
ever so little to the conclusion at which they point.” Even in 
Mathematics, when the process is long and intricate, and on new 
and difficult ground, the mathematician will not assent to his own 
conclusions, however often he has gone over the work, till he has 
had the corroboration of other judgments beside his own. Yet 
the corroboration of others cannot add to his perception of the 
proof; he would still perceive the proof, even though he failed in 
gaining their corroboration. “ Inference is conditional, dependent 
upon its premises. Assent is unconditional.” 

“ I doubt, indeed,” he says, “ whether Assent is ever given without 
some preliminary which stands for a reason; but it does not follow 
from this that it may not be withheld where there are good reasons 
for giving it to a proposition; or may not be withdrawn after it has 
been given, the reasons remaining; or may not remain when the 
reasons are forgotteu; or that they must vary in strength as the 
reasons vary ; and this substantiveness, as I may call it, of the act 
of Assent is the very point which I have wished to establish.” 

Recapitulating, I say, Determination, as a phenomenon of 
choice , is a function of the understanding, and takes place in view 
of reasons, miscalled motives, though not, as consciousness attests, 
under compulsion by them. Volition is force in energy directed 
to some particular end. Two questions maybe asked respecting 
it: 1. Whence comes this force ? 2. How is the force deter¬ 
mined to this end rather than to any other? To the first, I 
answer, that the force originates in myself, as a first cause con¬ 
sciously exerting effort, or putting forth power self-originated, and 
not merely transmitted passively, as received from another. The 
second question is answered by saying, that the direction of the 
effort either follows the previous determination of the understand¬ 
ing, in which case it is rational action, or departs from it at the last 
moment, in which case it is caprice. This theory is not presented 
as a complete solution of the difficulties in the case. Far from it. 
It is not easy to understand how the understanding, when pressed 
by conflicting reasons, is still free to choose which conclusion it 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


301 


. 


will adopt, irrespective of the comparative weight or cogency of 
these reasons ; but that it actually does so, and thus maintains its 
freedom, is attested by consciousness. We voluntarily look away 
from, or shut our eyes to, the weight of argument and evidence. 

“ He who ’s convinced against his will 
Is of the same opinion still.” 

Whatever the philosophers and the pedants may say about it, 
man is much less a reasoning, than a wilful, animal. The very 
worst way of undertaking to turn an obstinate man is to argue 
with him, and to prove that he is mistaken in his premises or his 
logic. He has a reason for his decision, so that it is not alto¬ 
gether arbitrary and capricious; but this is not necessarily the 
strongest reason, even in his own estimation. The error of the 
Necessitarians consists in affirming, that there can be no guidance 
at all of the choice, unless it is absolutely controlling guidance. 

The fact probably is, that Reasons cannot be measured by pints, 
or weighed by ounces, or even by grains. Their influence is not 
quantitative, but qualitative. We cannot tell why a volition is 
determined to one eud rather than any other, simply because we 
are unable to see how reasons can be thus equally balanced, or 
rather, how they cannot be compared with each other in respect 
to weight or influence. But we know from consciousness that they 
are thus equally balanced, or are incommensurable. The word 
motive, as it signifies that which moves, and implies a quantum of 
generating force, is either an unfair assumption of the whole dogma 
to be proved, or a misleading metaphor. 

But whatever the relation may be between the Reasons and the 
consequent choice or determination, there is the clearest evidence 
that it is not the same with the relation between a Cause and its 
Effect, and even that there is no proper similitude between them. 
A Cause in energy must be instantaneously followed by its Effect, 
if indeed the two are not more properly said to be simultaneous ; 
for the former is in operation only so far as the latter is produced. 
According to the Necessitarian theory, then, the will cannot re¬ 
main dormant while the Reasons for action are present to the mind, 
any more than a balance can remain in equilibrium after a weight 
has been put into one of the scales. If the volition must follow 
the strongest desire, then it must follow instantly; since an in¬ 
herent or uncaused power to delay is equivalent to a power to 
resist. But as John Locke remarked long ago, the mind has, as is 
evident in experience, a power to suspend the execution and satis* 


302 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


faction of any of its desires, till it can consider and examine them 
on all sides ; and hi', rightly adds, “ in this lies the liberty a man 
has.” Then the Necessitarian is compelled to assert, that an ante¬ 
cedent volition is necessary to determine the will to inaction ; or, 
in other words, that we need to will that the will should remain 
dormant, in regard to selecting one out of two or more contem¬ 
plated courses of action. We deny any such need. Will is power ; 
but it is not necessarily, or always, power in action. Like imagi¬ 
nation, it is a power or faculty which is called into action only 
occasionally, sometimes after long intervals. While the under¬ 
standing is wholly absorbed with some object of cogitation, as in 
working out a mathematical problem, or considering Reasons for 
divergent courses of conduct, we are not conscious of willing ; and 
the existence of a volition to suspend volition, at such a moment, is 
a blank hypothesis invented to save a theory. But the Reasons 
are then present to the mind, which is deeply engaged in consid¬ 
ering them ; that is, what the Necessitarian calls the Causes are 
present, and yet the Effect does not follow. 

Again, when several desires, leading in different directions, are 
all present to the mind at once, if their action upon the will were 
that of causes producing their effects, the action ought not to be 
in the direction of the strongest desire, but in that of the resultant 
of all the desires combined ; which is contrary to the fact. For 
example: I may have one strong wish to go to Boston, and another, 
almost equally urgent, to visit Medford. Then, on the Necessi¬ 
tarian theory of the inability of the will to act except as it is acted 
upon, I ought to go to neither of these places, but to Charlestown, 
which lies about half way between them, and whither I have no 
motive at all to go ; where, in fact, it might be very inconvenient 
for me to find myself. Therefi re, either the doctrine of the me¬ 
chanical or causative power of Reasons and desires is unfounded, 
or the whole science of mechanics, which is founded upon the com¬ 
position and resolution of forces, is false. 

According to the Fatalist doctrine, every phenomenon is both a 
cause of its invariable consequent, and an effect of its invariable 
antecedent; and this antecedent, again, is an effect of its antecedent, 
and so on forever. This series of antecedents must be infinite ; 
for if we stop at any one antecedent, whether near or remote, that 
one is an absolute commencement, or First Cause. Either the 
chain is infinite in length, therefore, or it has a first link, place 
this where we may. But an infinite series is just as impossible to 
thought as an uncaused volition, or First Cause; and thus the 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


303 


Necessitarian escapes from one inconceivability only by throwing 
himself into another. In following the series of causes, he who 
stops at any point short of infinity necessarily admits a First Cause 
at this point, and therefore might just as well have done so at the 
outset. 

When it is urged, that what I am able to do is not a subject of 
consciousness, but only what I actually do or feel, the answer is, 
that the exercise of ability, the exertion of power, is a subject of 
consciousness. Ability and force are attributes or powers of the 
mind ; and we are directly conscious of them when they are ex¬ 
erted or put forth, just as we are conscious of fixing the attention, 
or controlling emotion, by a strenuous effort. Whether the at¬ 
tempt succeeds or not, is a point of no importance for our present 
purpose; what I kuow is, that a vigorous effort was made to in¬ 
sure success. Even in the case of a muscular strain, the failure 
of the endeavor is far from negativing the consciousness of that 
endeavor. On the contrary, perhaps a strong man is never so fully 
aware of the extent of his powers, as when he has attempted to 
accomplish some remarkable feat, and failed; for success comes 
before, but failure only after, he has put forth his whole strength. 

Observe, however, that what we thus strongly assert is the ability 
to will , not the ability to do , or accomplish, the meditated feat; 
the latter, so far as it is an actual contraction of the muscles, can 
be known only through its results. But in one sense, and that a 
very important one, as already observed, the volition is the action, 
in its subjective and moral aspect, since it is for this alone that 
conscience holds us responsible. A mere volition to commit mur¬ 
der is murder, before God, though not at man’s tribunal ; since we 
can know the volitions of our fellow man only by their results, his 
outward acts. 

It is admitted, on all hands, that the internal force of volition is 
absolutely free from compulsion or restraint by any power whatso¬ 
ever applied to it from without. No external force can constrain 
the will. Bind me hand and foot with chains, and I am still con¬ 
scious that my will is just as free as ever. But if consciousness is 
thus competent to declare, and thereby to prove, the freedom of 
the will as against external compulsion, against bolts and chains, it 
is equally competent to affirm the like freedom as against internal 
compulsion, against pressing inducements and urgent desires. No 
one can candidly deny, that its testimony is just as clearly and 
positively given in the latter case as in the former. Whatever in¬ 
ducements may be present to my mind, I am still conscious that I 


304 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


can resist them all, can will the very act from which they seem to 
be doing their best to restrain me. A very considerable, even a 
painful, effort may be necessary to this end ; still we are conscious 
that it is a possible effort. 

“ Whence is it,” asks Dugald Stewart, “ that we consider the 
pain of the rack as an alleviation of the falsehoods extorted by it 
from the criminal ? Plainly because the motives presented to him 
are supposed to be such as no ordinary degree of self-command is 
able to 'resist. And if we were ouly satisfied that these motives 
were perfectly irresistible , we would not ascribe to him any guilt at 
all.” But we are not so satisfied ; we know that, even on the 
rack, he can persevere in willing to tell the truth. According to 
Mr. J. S. Mill’s theory, the motives are “irresistible;” yet we do 
him the justice to believe that, in spite of his theory, he would still 
censure the man for uttering the falsehood. Again, we ask, why 
accept the testimony of consciousness that these considerations, of 
extreme present pain and a strong desire to be released from it, 
do press and solicit with an urgency which it is difficult to with¬ 
stand, and yet deny the equally positive evidence of the same fac¬ 
ulty, that we can withstand them ? If we can weigh motives 
against each other, pronouncing this strong and that weak, we are 
surely competent to pronounce that any one, or any number, of 
them is weak or powei’less against a fixed determination of the 
will. 

Again, we all know that many states of mind are involuntary, 
as they come and go in spite of ourselves. This is the case gener¬ 
ally with most states of the understanding, with our perceptive 
faculties, and especially our aversions and desires. We cannot 
avoid hearing sounds and smelling odors, if the air be full of noises 
and fragrance. We cannot help coveting relief from pain and 
freedom from anxiety; novel and terrible objects affect us with 
fear, against which our most courageous feelings vainly strive. 
Consciousness testifies to this impotence, this absence of freedom. 
How, then, can we consistently refuse to accept its testimony in 
the case of volitions to the converse fact, the presence of freedom 
and the existence of power ? Two opposites explain and limit each 
other. I could not know necessity to be necessity, except by 
knowing freedom, and conceiving necessity as its opposite ; just as 
I cannot know pleasure, except by recognizing it as the opposite 
of pain. Therefore, those who deny us any knowledge of freedom, 
really preclude us from any recognition of necessity. 

Hitherto, I have argued against the old form of the doctrine of 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


305 


Fatalism ; — namely, that the strongest motive is a Cause, and, as 
such, compels the volition, as an Effect, to follow it. But the 
modern Necessitarians, since they ignore, or deny altogether, the 
notion of Efficient Causation, reject also the idea of compulsion. 
They argue from experience only. Certain inducements and de¬ 
sires being present to a mind of a given character and disposition, 
we find from experience, they say, that a volition corresponding to 
the relative strength of these inducements, and to the prevailing 
bent of the disposition, invariably follows. “ A volition is a moral 
effect, which follows the corresponding moral causes as certainly 
and invariably as physical effects follow their physical causes.” 
Mr. Mill acknowledges himself to be entirely ignorant whether it 
must so follow ; “ all I know is, that it always does.” By virtue 
of this distinction, which rejects coercion, but denies ability, he 
hopes to wipe off the most repulsive aspect, and to escape the most 
appalling consequences, of pure Fatalism. 

I must avow a strong belief that this is a distinction without any 
essential difference. It makes no possible difference to the pris¬ 
oner, though bolts and fetters do not compel him to stay in his cell, 
if he is so disabled that he cannot get out of it. Our quarrel with 
Mr. Mill is not for what he asserts, but for what he denies. He does 
not affirm Compulsion, but he denies Freedom. If my Volition 
“ always does ” follow the strongest motive, it is not at liberty to 
go in any other direction ; and there is small comfort in being 
reminded, that the lack of liberty does not arise from the applica¬ 
tion of any force whatever. 

On the old theory, the will is like an unfortunate man tied hand 
and foot, and dragged after the heels of a mad bull by a rope 
attached to the animal’s horns. This is the doctrine of Fatalism ; 
wherever the bull gallops, the man must follow, by compulsion. 
But this is not Mr. Mill’s theory. He asks us to believe that the 
rope has disappeared, and that there is no compulsion in the case, 
whether visible or real; and yet that we learn from actual obser¬ 
vation, that the man “ always does ” follow his grim antecedent at 
the same distance as before, each bound of the one being copied 
by a corresponding leap of the other. This, he says, is not Fatal¬ 
ism, is not even Necessity, since there is no must in the case. But 
it is what he calls, at one time, the “ Determinism ” of the Will, 
and at another, “ Moral Causation,” or the doctrine of invariable 
sequence. 

Evidently this latter statement of the theory is more unwar¬ 
rantable than the former. We can understand the necessity which 
20 


306 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


has a cause, the lack of freedom which proceeds from restraint, or 
that one should be a slave when he has a master. But without a 
cause, without restraint, without a master, it is not merely incredi¬ 
ble, but inconceivable, that the will should not be free. 

"We come, then, to the question of fact, and are met by Mr. 
Mill’s vehement affirmation of the point, “ as a truth of experience, 
that volitions do, in point of fact, follow determinate moral antece¬ 
dents with the same uniformity, and (when we have sufficient 
knowledge of the circumstances ) with the same certainty, as physi¬ 
cal events follow their physical causes.” 

Observe the parenthetical qualification; for since we surely do 
not “ have sufficient knowledge of the circumstances ” under which 
any one of our fellow men acts, to be able to predict, with any 
certainty, what his actions will be in one case out of a thousand, 
it is obviously not “ a truth of experience,” but one of very doubt¬ 
ful inference, in the vast majority of instances, that those actions 
are rigidly uniform and subject to law. Varium et mutabile semper 
femina is a most unjust aspersion of one sex, so far as it implies 
that they are one whit more whimsical and capricious than the 
other. To any student of human nature, to any keen observer of 
life and manners, this comparison of the conduct of men on ordi¬ 
nary occasions, with the invariable sequence of mechanical and 
chemical phenomena in the outward universe, will appear amusing 
on account of its very extravagance. On such a subject, the 
appeal lies, not to philosophers and men of science, but to poets and 
dramatists, to biographers, essayists, moralists, men of the world, and 
men of affairs. I confidently invoke all literature, excepting only 
treatises on physical science and the speculations of system-mon¬ 
gers on abstract subjects, for proof of the assertion, that no two 
men ever act alike under the same circumstances, and that no one 
man ever adopts precisely the same course of conduct on two sim¬ 
ilar occasions. I would almost define man to be an animal that 
never repeats himself. We might challenge the Fatalist himself to 
say whether, out of the thousand little actions which fill up one of 
the ordinary days of his life, any three ever resemble each other as 
closely as do three beats of the pendulum of his clock. One who 
has gone through the process of learning to play on the piano can 
tell whether it was an easy task to reduce the movements of his fin¬ 
gers to mechanical uniformity in striking the right notes at the right 
moment. Evidently, what has to be educated in this case is the 
will, not the muscles; for, at the outset, the fingers may already be 
deft enough in executing other little tasks, equally minute, with all 
needed precision. 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


307 


Whatever may be made out, then, by inference, analogy, and 
theory, I stoutly deny that the uniformity and certainty of voli¬ 
tions is “ a truth of experience,” meaning thereby a fact patent to 
observation. Mr. Mill could not have chosen a weaker position 
for his doctrine, as nearly all the facts point directly the other way. 
He would say, of course, that when the volitions vary, the ante¬ 
cedents are different. Be it so, for the nonce ; but if the antece¬ 
dents are hardly ever the same, the uuiformity of the volitions is 
certainly not a truth of experience. And since these “ moral an¬ 
tecedents are desires, aversions, habits, and dispositions ” in another 
man’s mind, how can any one not gifted with omniscience declare, 
that they are always different when the volition is not the same, 
and always alike when a volition is exactly repeated ? In truth, 
what is here claimed as “ experience ” must be resolved into an 
inveterate preconceived opinion, that even the actions of the human 
will cannot escape the universality of law; — an honest opinion, 
it may be, but one which takes for granted the whole matter in 
dispute. 

I am far from denying a certain measure and kind of uniformity 
in human conduct. The doctrine of Free Will recognizes this 
fact, and accounts for it by the essential unity of human nature. 
It is certain we often act uniformly, because we are rational be¬ 
ings ; and we often act inconsistently and not according to rule, 
because we are free beings. Men are similarly, though not equally, 
endowed with the great springs and impulses of activity, — with 
corresponding appetites, affections, and desires, l% which determine 
the principal Ends of action, and with intellectual powers that are 
homogeneous, though not equiponderant, so that often similar Means 
are adopted for effecting our purposes. Whole sciences, such as 
ethics, politics, political economy, and the philosophy of history, 
are built upon this general accordance of human beings with each 
other; though the surface of life is constantly broken and fretted 
by the idiosyncrasies of intellect and character. A prevailing 
unity of aim and purpose is created by the wants and necessities 
even of our physical being; and some uniformity of conduct is the 
obvious result of the similar circumstances by which we are sur¬ 
rounded. But above and around this accordance of general feat¬ 
ures, there is room for infinite variety of details, and a boundless 
field for the freedom of particular volitions. 

The Necessitarians utterly mistake the lesson which is taught 
by “ the statistical results of the observation of human beings, act¬ 
ing in numbers sufficient to eliminate the influences which operate 


308 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


only on a few, and which, on a large scale, neutralize one another.” 
What these show is that similarity of leading purposes, and corre¬ 
spondence of general ends and aims, which result from the endow¬ 
ment of all men with the same passions, and from the unity in 
kind, though not in degree, of our cognitive faculties. They afford 
little or no evidence of the agreement of men with each other in 
the single acts and special volitions which are the Means by which 
these leading purposes are carried into effect; that is, they give 
hardly any testimony which is relevant to the present discussion. 
Thus, all men desire society, approbation, power, wealth. Experi¬ 
ence teaches them by what general lines of conduct these ends 
may most probably be attained; and along these lines, men move 
with a good degree of uniformity, though by no means with the 
same speed or eagerness. To the attainment of these broad and 
common ends a vast number of particular aims and efforts, — the 
special undertakings of professional, commercial, mechanical, and 
social enterprise, — are subservient; and here, unity of action is 
much less obvious, and often cannot be traced at all. Then, each 
of these less general ends can be pursued only by an almost count¬ 
less multitude of special volitions, which escape the dominion of 
law altogether, and manifest only infinite variety and caprice. 
Here is the proper realm of the Freedom of the Will; the uniform¬ 
ity which was found before, in the general purposes of life, — 
which is proved by statistics, and is the object of discussion in the 
moral sciences, — is traceable not so much to the Will as to the 
unity of our intellectual and emotional endowments. It charac¬ 
terizes those acts of the understanding which lead to choice or 
preference, and which, as we have seen, not only precede the action 
of the Will, but are usually separated from it by a conscious inter¬ 
val of time. 

Analyze such statistical evidence as has been collected by Quete- 
let and other observers, and the correctness of these observations 
will be apparent. The events which are thus proved to recur, 
year after year, in nearly the same degree of frequency, maintain¬ 
ing almost an equal proportion to the whole number of people, 
will be found complex in nature, alike only in outward aspect, 
springing from different motives, and carried out by very dissimi¬ 
lar means. Thus, the number of homicides, suicides, robberies, 
petty thefts, cases of intemperance, and the like, that occur annu¬ 
ally in a given population, are cited as proving the reign of law 
where it would be least expected. But how unlike is one case of 
Vomicide or suicide to another, — unlike in the passions which 


FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 


309 


produced them, the circumstances which excited these passions, the 
quickness with which the determination was carried out, and the 
means by which the crowning act was perpetrated! The lawyers, 
after a very imperfect analysis, distinguish at least half a dozen 
kinds of killing. One man jumps overboard because crossed in 
love; a clerk or trustee hangs himself because detected in embez¬ 
zlement ; a gambler throws away life after fortune; a sentenced 
criminal escapes the shame of a public execution ; the prosperous 
man destroys himself in a fit of insanity. Statistics which lump 
together so dissimilar acts as these prove nothing as to the uniform 
sequence between volitions and their moral antecedents. To hunt 
through the history of the world for one human act perfectly re¬ 
sembling another, not only in itself, but in the motives which pro?^ 
duced it, would be as bootless an undertaking as to take up the 
challenge of Leibnitz, and seek on an oak tree for two leaves 
which should be exact counterparts of each other. And yet the 
Necessitarian claims uniformity of sequence between motives and 
volitions as “ a truth of experience ! ” 



CHAPTER XVII. 


Fichte. 

The general result of Kant’s Critical Philosophy is that all 
knowledge is limited and conditioned by experience. We know 
only phenomena, only that which appears. But being in itself, 
the real ground of that which appears, the thing as it actually is, 
apart from its manifestation to us, is absolutely incognizable. "We 
have no faculty capable of grasping what transcends the sphere 
of sense; we must be content with what is given to us, and as it 
is given to us. There are inborn and necessary principles of the 
human understanding, synthetic cognitions a priori, valid for all 
experience, but valid only for experience. And yet Kant is a 
realist. He maintains that there are noumena, dinge an sich, 
things as they really are; for there must be a ground or basis of 
what is manifested to us under the forms of space and time, and 
in accordance with the Categories. He is driven to this admis¬ 
sion by what he had conceded in the outset; that there is a re¬ 
ceptivity, as well as a spontaneity, of the human mind, and, conse¬ 
quently, that there is something given to and received by the mind, 
apart from its power of reacting upon and modifying what is thus 
given. If nothing is, nothing would appear ; if there were no 
reality, there would be no phenomenon, and nothing to determine 
why the object should appear thus, rather than otherwise. What 
this noumeual reality is, we do not know, and never can know. 
Kant only asserts that it is; we never can know what it is, or how 
it is. 

Then came Fichte, whose endeavor is to sweep away even this 
poor ghost of actual being, and to refashion Kant’s broad but dis¬ 
cursive survey of the limitations of human knowledge into a scien¬ 
tific and rigorously demonstrated system of Idealism, or rather of 
absolute Egoism; a system which is, in fact, a combination of Spi- 
nozism and Berkeleyanism. Fichte reduces the universe of exist¬ 
ence to one absolute and universal Ego, which spins out in thought 
an imaginary world and a finite and particular Ego, only as a 


FICHTE. 


311 


means of arriving at a consciousness of itself. His system differs 
from that of Kant, therefore, in two important respects: first, as 
it teaches idealism instead of realism; and, secondly, as it is an 
attempt to establish a philosophy of the absolute and the uncon¬ 
ditioned, and thus to build up dogmatism again, in spite of the 
pretended demonstration in the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” that 
such an undertaking transcends the limits of the human intellect. 

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (born 1762, died 1814) began his phil¬ 
osophical career by publishing, at the age of twenty-nine years, a 
book composed by him in four weeks, entitled a “ Critique of all 
Revelation.” It was an attempt to determine a priori, on the 
principles of the Critical Philosophy, whether any special revela¬ 
tion from God to man is possible, and, if so, what must be its na¬ 
ture and evidence. In other words, supposing the existence of a 
God, and of a race of beings constituted and situated as we are, 
the purpose is to determine whether it is conceivable that He 
should make a special communication to His creatures; and, if so, 
what must be its purport, and how the message could be authen¬ 
ticated. As the doctrines expressed were very similar to those of 
Kant, and as the work was first published anonymously, in 1791, 
it was at first universally attributed to Kant himself. But he dis¬ 
avowed it by the complimentary remark, that he should have 
deemed it an honor to be the author of so able a book; and two 
years afterwards, he attempted to solve the same problem himself, 
by publishing his treatise entitled “ Religion within the limits of 
mere Reason.” Both writers endeavor to expound that system of 
Rationalism in religion, which is the only one consistent with the 
principles of the Transcendental philosophy. Fichte’s conclusion 
is, that if the doctrine which claims to be revealed from heaven 
contains anything more than the Moral Law, originally written in 
our own hearts, it cannot be of divine origin; if it be perfectly 
coincident with that Law, it is useless, and can in no proper sense 
be called a revelation. Still, he says, we can conceive of a people 
reduced by circumstances to so low a state, that even the wish to 
comply with the dictates of conscience has either died out among 
them, or has never been developed. To such, a revelation authen¬ 
ticated by miracles may temporarily be of use, in order to awaken 
among them, by awe and wonder, a due sense of moral obligation, 
to stun their senses into obedience, and to guide their first at¬ 
tempts in virtue. When they have advanced far enough in moral 
and religious culture to recognize the independent and imperative 
character of the law of conscience, there will no longer be any 


312 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


need of a message from God, and their now enlightened intellects 
will soon perceive that the assumed evidence of its authenticity is 
illusive and baseless. The general doctrine of Rationalism is, that 
religion is only a sort of moral go-cart; the natural development 
of the child’s own powers soon enables it to walk alone. 

Compared with other works of the same class, Fichte’s “ Cri¬ 
tique ” has high merits in point of execution. It attracted notice 
by a Titanlike audacity of speculation, which seemed to aim at 
scaling the heavens and prescribing limits to Omnipotence. Of 
course, the work bristles all over with the formidable terminology 
of its school; but in point of clearness, precision, and brevity, it is 
far superior to the writings of Kant. The conduct of the argu¬ 
ment throughout is marked by severe logic and admirable arrange¬ 
ment. The style is dry, as the nature of the subject demands; 
but in treating of the theory of morals, and especially in develop¬ 
ing his pure and lofty conception of absolute right, the writer 
kindles with his theme, and the argumentation, though still severe, 
swells into chaste and impressive eloquence. The well-merited 
reputation, which it established for its author, was the means of 
procuring for him, in 1793, a professorship of philosophy at the 
university of Jena, a situation which rescued him from the ex¬ 
treme poverty which seems to have been the common doom of the 
great thinkers of Germany during the earlier portions of their 
career. Here, the first year after his appointment, he published 
his Wissenschaftslehre , or “ Theory of Science,” the first sketch of 
a system of philosophy which really controverted the principles of 
Kant, though it professed only to carry them out to their farthest 
consequences, to reduce them to rigorous precision and method, 
and thereby to erect in stately architecture a system of human 
knowledge upon a foundation as broad and sure as that which 
Euclid constructed for geometry. He who studies the Wissen¬ 
schaftslehre will not find his progress impeded, as in the case of 
Kant’s “ Critique,” by any marked defects of style. Fichte is a 
good writer, distinct, concise, and forcible ; but he abuses his power 
of strict argumentation and abstract thought. His work is as arid 
and forbidding as the desert of Sahara. It is a tour de force 
of abstruse and repulsive metaphysics. If first published in any 
other country than Germany, it would never have found a reader. 
I shall not attempt any exposition of it at full length. It will be 
enough to penetrate so far into the system that the reader may 
discern its prominent characteristics, and make out its general 
bearing and tendency. 


FICHTE. 


313 


Every particular science, says Fichte, must have one fundamental 
principle, on which all its conclusions are based, or to which they 
can be traced back. This one principle the science itself cannot 
undertake to prove ; it must be taken for granted, as certain, be¬ 
forehand. Then there must be some universal science, whose office 
it will be to demonstrate the fundamental principles of all the par¬ 
ticular sciences, and thereby to build up the edifice of all human 
knowledge into one structure, coherent in all its parts, firmly 
bolted together, uniform in its development, and self-consistent 
throughout. This universal science, therefore, will be the Theory 
of Science in general, or the Science of Sciences, because it will 
be the common foundation, of which they are the superstructure. 
Moreover, like them, it must have its own fundamental principle, 
which, as there is nothing lying behind or above it, cannot be 
proved ; for as it must be the ultimate means of proving every 
thing else, it cannot be deduced from any other truth without rea¬ 
soning in a circle. And yet it must in some manner be established ; 
otherwise, the scientific arch would be without its keystone; we 
should have the particular sciences resting each on its own funda¬ 
mental principle, these principles collectively on the Wissenschafts- 
lehre , this universal science based on its own first axiom, but this 
axiom, this corner-stone of all science, resting on nothing, a mere 
baseless assumption. To say that we must begin by taking at least 
one such principle for grafted, is to give up all pretension of being 
scientific, and to proceed arbitrarily, according to our own good 
will and pleasure. To affirm that this ultimate principle shines 
by its own light, so as not to need any proof, is only to say 
that it appears to us to be thus self-guarantied ; and this would 
be giving it only phenomenal or apparent validity; it would be 
true for us, but not true absolutely. Even if it were innate, or a 
part of the original structure of our minds, it does not follow that 
it must be authoritative ; for we have not yet proved the existence 
of Mind or Self, much less the validity of all innate principles. 

It is evident, therefore, that Fichte came forward as the rival 
of Descartes, having the same end in view which was proposed in 
the “ Discourse on Method,” adopting similar means for the ac¬ 
complishment of this end, and, as we shall soon see, in the initial 
steps of his system, arriving at precisely the same results as those 
established by his French predecessor. It is merely a difference of 
language, not founded on any divergence of thought, to say that 
Descartes began by doubting every thing, and Fichte by taking 
nothing for granted. The purpose of the two systems was the 


314 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


same, namely, to find a corner-stone which should be steadfast and 
immovable, not based on anything else, because needing no support 
beyond itself, and also capable of serving as a foundation on which 
the whole fabric of human knowledge might securely rest. Can 
any truth or fact be pointed out which is absolutely self-evident and 
unquestionable, which skepticism itself cannot doubt, and which is 
also a fruitful principle, so that all other truths may either be di¬ 
rectly elicited from it, or be traced back to it as the ultimate means 
of their confirmation ? If such there be, then the doctrine of the 
Relativity of Knowledge, which is much in vogue at the present 
day, must be abandoned. It would be difficult to find two philoso¬ 
phers more unlike each other in their characters, their tastes and 
pursuits, and the general tendencies of their intellects, than Des¬ 
cartes and Fichte. They were trained in wholly dissimilar schools 
of thought, and approached the problem in opposite directions. But 
they arrived at the same result. Both teach that the central truth 
of philosophy, and therefore of all human knowledge, is the ex¬ 
istence of Self, the indivisible and consequently immaterial Ego of 
consciousness. 

But I go back to Fichte’s own exposition of the manner in 
which he arrived at this conclusion. We have to search for the 
absolute, first, and unconditioned principle of human knowledge. 
It cannot be proved, for there is nothing behind or above it; it 
cannot be determined, for there is nothing to limit it or render 
it definite. It cannot be an empirical fact of consciousness, for it 
must be thought as the basis of all the truths of consciousness. 
If there be any such principle, it must be that the very act of 
affirming it constitutes its existence and its proof. It must be, at 
once, the act of affirming and the truth affirmed, the action and the 
result of the activity, the truth cognized and the act of cognizing it, 
both in one. It must be what Fichte calls a Thathandlung , “ a fact- 
action.” Every other truth may be divided by abstraction into 
two parts, its matter or content, and its form ; — that is; something 
whereof we know, and that which we know respecting that some¬ 
thing. For instance, to adopt Fichte’s own illustration, in the 
proposition, “ gold is a metal,” the matter or content is “ gold ” 
and “ metal; ” for about these we know ; and what we know of 
them, or the Form of the judgment, is, that these two in a certain 
respect are one — that gold is a metal, so that one can be substi¬ 
tuted for the other. But as the absolute fundamental principle of 
the Wissenschaftslehre is to be the ground of all certainty, and to 
come before all other knowledge, no Matter or Content can be pre- 


FICHTE. 


315 




viously given to it about which to know ; but what we know, or- 
the Form, must constitute that respecting which we know, or the 
Matter; and the reverse. Its Form must determine its Content, 
and its Content must determine its Form. And this is only repeat¬ 
ing what was said before, that it must be a Thathandlung, the act 
of knowing and the truth known, both in one. In other words, 
the fundamental principle of all our knowledge must necessarily 
be a formal and a material principle, both at once ; that is, it must 
be not merely an abstract Form or Rule, which fashions into unity 
the Matter of our thought, this Matter being given to us from 
without, but it must be a productive power, which, from itself, first 
gives us the Matter or elements of the knowledge, and at the same 
time, and in the same act, moulds and fashions this Matter, bring¬ 
ing it into a determinate Form. Let us then try to find such a 
fundamental principle, or “ fact-action; ” since it can only be found 
by experiment. 

Let us first take the identical proposition, A = A, or the equiv¬ 
alent expression, A is A, which everybody will admit to be abso¬ 
lutely certain, that is, certain in itself, without any ground or 
reason for its certainty; and by admitting thus much, every one 
ascribes to himself the power of absolutely affirming something. 
But by so doing in this case, he acquires only the Form of knowl¬ 
edge, without any Matter or Content. For the proposition, A = 
A, does not tell us what A is, or even that A exists, either as its 
subject or its predicate. It only affirms— 11 posits” is, the tech¬ 
nical term for affirming — it only posits that, if A is, then it is 
equal to A. In technical phrase, then, the proposition is uncondi¬ 
tioned or absolute in Form, but conditioned in Matter. Thus we 
only affirm absolutely an act of knowing, but not as yet anything 
about which this act is conversant. But even to affirm only an act 
of knowing, is to affirm that I know ; for an act is impossible 
without an actor ; a deed requires a doer. To adopt Fichte’s lan¬ 
guage, “ in so far, at least, as any connection is affirmed between A 
as subject and A as predicate, that connection is posited in and 
through the Ego.” In short, every thought, because it is an act, 
requires a thinker ; and as the proposition, A = A, is certainly 
thought, there must be an Ego who thinks it; — not necessarily 
your Ego, nor my Ego, for as yet it is perfectly indeterminate ; but 
only a thinker, a universal Ego. Egoity and individuality, the 
pure Ego and the empirical Ego, are entirely different ideas. 

The same reasoning may be more clearly stated as follows: 
In the proposition, A = A, the first A, which is the Subject, is 


316 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


only affirmed conditionally. If A is, then it is = A. But the 
second A, which is the Predicate, is affirmed absolutely ; for if 
the condition is fulfilled, then, beyond all question, the first A must 
be equal to the second. Now what is it which brings these two 
terms into this relation of equality with each other ? What is it 
which here acts, — which judges, affirms, and constitutes this rela¬ 
tion between them ? Evidently it is the Ego ; it is I myself. Take 
away the Ego, and you take away the relation; you remove the 
two terms ; you cancel the proposition. Then, above the propo¬ 
sition, A = A, well founded as it appears to be, there is a higher 
truth, a truth more immediately known ; namely, the act, and 
therefore the existence, of the Ego. Then the proposition, Ego 
= Ego, or I am, is unconditional both in Matter and in Form. 
The first Ego, or subject, is affirmed unconditionally, as well as the 
second Ego, or predicate. This judgment, then, Ego = Ego, I am, 
is absolute truth, dependent on no condition whatsoever. Here', 
then, we have the absolute fundamental principle of which we 
were in search, the ground of all certainty, that on which all other 
knowledge depends, but which, itself, depends on nothing else; it 
is absolute. Every other cognition implies and depends upon this 
one, which is the highest of all. 

“ The question has been asked,” says Fichte, “ What was I be¬ 
fore I became self-conscious ? The answer is, I was not at all, for 
I was not I. The Ego is, only so far as it is conscious of itself.” 
In affirming that I am I, the Ego posits itself without needing to be 
contra-distinguished from something which is not-itself; for in 
this judgment, the predicate is identical with the subject. One is 
affirmed to be absolutely the same Ego as the other. And further, 
as already observed, by asking what I was, you assume the exist¬ 
ence of a past, and therefore the reality of Time, the existence of 
which has not yet been proved. If you did not assume what you 
have no right to take for granted, namely, the reality of Time, you 
would not ask the question. 

Then this truth is not only absolutely certain, but it is also the 
fundamental principle of all knowledge; since knowledge would 
not be knowledge, unless I know it; that is, unless I exist as the 
subject knowing, and, by contradistinguishing myself from the 
object known, affirm my own existence. Here we have, then, 
that corner-stone of the whole edifice of science which was the 
object of inquiry. The Ego is a necessary element of all knowl¬ 
edge, and is the absolutely Unconditioned, or, more briefly, the 
Absolute; for it is out of relation to anything else, is thus indepen- 


FICHTE. 


317 


dent of every thing, and self-existent, because it exists merely by 
affirming itself. As I have said, it is not my Ego, nor your Ego, 
nor any Ego in particular; for as yet, there is no distinction be¬ 
tween me and you, but whoever posits the Ego, is that Ego, and is 
alone in the universe. Any other existence can be known only 
by distinguishing it from something else. This alone exists merely 
by affirming its own existence, and is perfectly indeterminate, be¬ 
cause it is distinguished from nothing. It posits only its own 
being, and it is by virtue of that positing. It is created from 
nothing, but every thing in the whole fabric of science must be 
created or developed from it. All knowledge is a mere self-devel¬ 
opment of the Ego. I am every thing, and every thing exists only 
in my thought. This is absolute Idealism, or rather Egoism and 
Pantheism both in one. 

What can be said of such a monstrous system as this, except 
that it is very curious and ingenious, and is a marvel of rigorous 
argumentation and abstract thought ? Like Spinozism, which it 
very closely resembles, it is an exaggerated and one-sided devel¬ 
opment of Cartesianism. It is really all contained in the “ I 
think, therefore I am.” Descartes says, Skepticism itself cannot 
doubt the existence of thought, for doubt is thought; and when I 
think, I am. Having thus secured the existence of a thinker, 
Descartes proceeds from one of the ideas in this thinker’s mind, 
that of a perfect and infinite being, to prove, first, the existence of 
a God, and then, through the veracity of God, the trustworthiness 
of our faculties, whereby we are assured of the existence of other 
humau beings beside ourselves, and of a real universe, such as 
these faculties make known to us. Thus, out of the abyss of 
thorough-going skepticism, out of doubting every thing except the 
presence of thought to consciousness, Descartes works his way up 
to a full conviction of the reality of every thing that is witnessed 
by sense or proved by logic. In truth, his system, because it is 
self-consistent throughout, is more complete and satisfactory than 
that of any of the philosophers of the Absolute Who came after 
him; for by reasoning back from the veracity of God, he estab¬ 
lishes the validity of those original laws of thought on which all 
reasoning depends. His German successors are compelled to 
assume, without proof, this trustworthy character of the first prin¬ 
ciples of logic, since otherwise they could not take a step towards 
building up a theory. Fichte proceeds only half way along with 
Descartes, and then stops short. According to him, every judg¬ 
ment, because it is an act of thought establishing the relation be- 


318 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


tween a subject and a predicate, though without positing the ex¬ 
istence of either, assures the reality of an actor or thinker ; and 
this Ego posits its own existence by an act of self-consciousness; 
since the identical judgment, “ I am I,” needs no confirmation be¬ 
yond itself, but is absolutely certain in itself. But Fichte refuses 
to carry the system any further. He will not admit the Cartesian 
argument for the being of a God, after the merciless criticism to 
which it had been subjected by Kant; and he therefore leaves his 
Ego alone in the universe, an absolute, impersonal, and inconceiv¬ 
able Being; or rather,he proceeds by attempting to show how the 
Ego evolves out of the depths of its own consciousness an imag¬ 
inary non-Ego, and thereby an ideal universe, peopled with ideal 
beings, whose imagined existence is the only means whereby it 
can become conscious of its own individuality, or supposed relative 
and limited existence. 

Here, then, we have the grave question distinctly brought be¬ 
fore us, whether Absolute Idealism, or Solipsismus, as the Ger¬ 
mans now call it, is a tenable and sufficient system of philosophy. 
As the result of the prolonged inquiry into the origin, the nature, 
and the certainty of human knowledge, are we compelled to adopt 
this lamentable conclusion, that the universe, both of mind and 
matter, is only “ the baseless fabric of a vision,” a mere dream 
floating before the thought of a solitary and impersonal thinker ? 
This is the abyss of nothingness in which every Monistic scheme, 
every “ Philosophy of the Absolute,” if logically carried out, inev¬ 
itably terminates. A system of Absolute Idealism must be sharply 
distinguished from the modified and partial Idealism, which is 
taught by Berkeley and his followers. The essence of the for¬ 
mer is Monism, or the doctrine of Alleinheit; that Plurality, even 
in its earliest stage, as Dualism, is only phenomenal, since all real 
being is absolutely one. Except in the mode of its presenta¬ 
tion, there is no novelty in it; it is only a revival of the Eleatic 
school; Xenophanes and Parmenides taught the same system 
nearly three thousand years ago. But the modified Idealism of 
Berkeley, distinctly recognizing the existence of other finite minds 
outside of the thinker’s individuality, and of the Infinite Mind 
which is partially mirrored in them all, teaches the plurality or 
multiplicity of individual being, and eliminates matter from the 
universe only by spiritualizing it, and then holding it to be the 
type and essence of reality. Strictly speaking, then, Berkeleyan- 
ism should not be called Idealism, but Spiritualism, since it teaches 
the reality of a Non-Ego as presented in countless forms to our 


FICHTE. 


319 


thought, though these forms or manifestations are not corporeal 
objects, but spiritual objects. It was a gross blunder of the 
Scotch school, of good Dr. Reid and his followers, to regard Berke¬ 
ley’s system as skeptical in itself, or as tending indirectly to 
skeptical conclusions. 

It is objection enough to any system of Absolute (subjective) 
Idealism, like that of Fichte, that it does not reach the end in 
view ; it leaves the problem only half solved; it stops far short of 
the very purpose which philosophy was instituted in order to 
accomplish. Even if we adopt its conclusion, and resolve all 
things into a mere dream, the mystery of the universe, as pre¬ 
sented to our thought, remains just as inscrutable as ever. For 
the question immediately arises, Why this particular dream, rather 
than any other ? Granted, if you will, that the universe is ouly 
a phantom, and that there is no speculation, no reality, in those 
eyes that it does glare with. Still it must be admitted, that it is a 
perfectly definite phantom, intricate and far-reaching, with count¬ 
less parts and attributes, all artistically arranged, fitted to each 
other and jointed into one whole. It may be a mere dream; but 
it is an extensive, orderly, and consistent dream, not a mere 
jumble of incoherent fancies, like those crowded together in a sick 
man’s brain. Still less is it of excessive simplicity and indefinite¬ 
ness, a mere Non-Ego, as it is presented by Fichte, with no char¬ 
acteristics at all; — a mere Anstoss, or point of resistance external 
to thought, by impinging on which the Ego is first waked up to a 
consciousness of its own distinct and individual existence. The 
bloodless and featureless Non-Ego, which alone this system is able 
to conjure up, advances us hardly a step in our attempt to under¬ 
stand the mystery even of a dream-creation, such as is actually 
presented to our thought. Even Fichte’s elaborate evolution of 
the Kantian Categories from the depths of the Ego’s thought does 
not help him, and brings him hardly an inch nearer a solution of 
the problem; for these Categories of quantity, quality, relation, 
etc., are still lofty and vague abstractions, without one particular¬ 
izing element, and so incapable of giving definite dimensions, 
shape, or color to a single phenomenon in the universe. Fichte’s 
conception of the Non-Ego is that of a completely empty and in¬ 
definite Object, the only office of which is to put a limit upon the 
Ego; there is nothing to be perceived in this Object, except that 
it is opposed to the Subject. Such a Non-Ego affords no expla¬ 
nation whatever of the universe either as it really is, per se, or as 
it appears to the human mind; — either as a noumenon, or as a 


320 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


phenomenon. The system of Absolute Idealism, therefore, logi¬ 
cally dovetailed together though it be, is as idle and profitless a 
speculation as the perverted ingenuity of man ever put together. 

Another objection to it was strongly urged by Schelling. The 
doctrine, that every thing exists only through the Ego and for the 
Ego, is indeed a flattering one for human pride, and for our boast¬ 
ful feeling that we are dependent solely on ourselves. But it is 
Thrasonic and overweening in its assumption ; and when closely 
examined, its extravagant pretensions are revealed in their true 
character, as arbitrary and baseless. For though it is true that the 
outer world exists only for me and through me, and in so far only 
as I also exist along with it, and as I am conscious of myself in so 
doing; the counter proposition is also true, that I exist, and am 
conscious that I am, solely on condition of the outer world also 
already existing beside me, not as my creation, not as produced by 
me, but as the indispensable prerequisite for that consciousness 
and that affirmation of my own existence, through which only, ac¬ 
cording to Fichte, I first become myself. Granted, that the Object 
depends on the Subject; is it not equally evident, that the Subject 
depends on the Object, and that the one cannot be conceived with¬ 
out the other ? The two correlative terms cannot be separated 
even for a moment, without destroying the relation between them, 
and thereby annihilating both. But I need not dwell upon this 
criticism here; since the divergence of Schelling’s own system 
from that of Fichte begins precisely at this point, and therefore 
the subject will come up for consideration hereafter. 

Let us now trace a few steps of the process whereby the abso¬ 
lute Ego, according to Fichte, arrives at a consciousness of a per¬ 
sonal and determinate Ego, through opposing to itself an imag¬ 
inary Non-Ego. Here, I shall only attempt to indicate some of 
the peculiarities of his method, and the general character of his 
results, without wearying the reader with the details of an abstruse 
system, which could not be made intelligible without prolonged 
discussion. I have already explained this necessary law of thought, 
that we can determine an object, or know it to be what it is, only 
by distinguishing it from what it is not. Thus we can know the 
color red to be red, only by distinguishing it from blue, green, or 
some other color different from red. This law of thought is to be 
kept in mind with reference to all that follows. Observe also the 
method, a combination of the analytic and synthetic methods, and 
the complement of the law of thought just mentioned, whereby, 
beginning with a single and indeterminate datum of consciousness, 


FICHTE. 


321 


Fichte resolves it into two opposite or contradictory notions or 
judgments, and then, by a higher act of synthesis, reconciles this 
. contradiction, and unites the two opposites into a richer and more 
determinate notion. Then, repeating the analysis of this last 
result into two other opposites, another synthesis of these produces 
a still higher cognition ; and so on indefinitely, thus constructing 
a priori the whole fabric of science out of a single fundamental 
principle, instead of collecting empirically, like Kant, all the data 
and categories, and setting them down in mere juxtaposition. This 
is the method of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, which Hegel 
soon borrowed from Fichte, improved and developed it as the 
immanent logic of the Idea, and made it the keynote, indeed, of his 
whole metaphysical system. It may be not inaptly symbolized by 
a magnetic iron bar, with its north and south poles, and point of 
indifference "half way between them. Break this in two at its 
central point, and forthwith you have two magnets, each complete, 
with its opposite poles and indifferent centre. Hence this method 
has been called by some “ polar logic.” It really depends upon 
this curious law of thought, that two contradictories, like any two 
correlative terms, are really grasped and apprehended by one act 
of thought; and this for a good reason; because what is really 
thought in such a case, is, not the two terms, but the one relation 
between them. Thus, we may draw two straight lines, not paral¬ 
lel to each other, on the blackboard, and we cannot tell whether 
they are convergent or divergent. Really they are both ; yet the 
two terms are contradictories. In like manner, a curved line is 
both convex and concave, though these two terms contradict each 
other. I dwell on this curious law of thought, because he who 
understands it has taken a long step towards understanding Fichte, 
Schelling, and Hegel; and, I may add, if he fully understands it, 
towards refuting all three. 

But to return to Fichte: as yet we have only the absolute Ego, 
indeterminate, that is, not defined or limited by any attribute 
whatsoever, but which exists merely by affirming its existence; 
and this gives us the category of being, or reality, though not yet 
distinguished from any other being, so that it is only “ being in 
general,” or in the abstract. This Ego, existing only by an act 
of self-affirmation, is nothing but pure and infinite activity; — “in¬ 
finite,” I say, because not as yet limited or restrained by any 
other being whatsoever. As the first exertion of this activity, and 
likewise as the first step towards self-determination, the Ego posits, 
or affirms the existence of, another being or activity over against 
21 


822 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


itself, which is not itself, and therefore is a Non-Ego. At first, I 
only know that I am; but I begin to know what I am, as soon as I 
can distinguish myself from something which I am not — that is, 
from a Non-Ego, a Not-Self. This can be logically done ; for the 
judgment “ I am I ” gives, by the well-known logical procedure, 
contraposition through infinitation, this other judgment, “ I am not 
not-I.” Stated more simply, “I am not not-I,” the second funda¬ 
mental principle of the Wissenschaftslehre, is an immediate and per¬ 
fectly logical inference from “ I am I.” This second affirmation, 
therefore, is just as absolute or unconditioned as the former one. 
But observe that it is unconditioned in Form only; not in Mat¬ 
ter, for the Non-Ego is posited by the Ego, and can be known 
only under condition of knowing the Ego: — just hs “ not-red ” 
can be known only through what “ red ” is, — “ invertebrate ” 
only through “ vertebrate.” Already, then, we have Idealism, or 
rather Egoism, firmly established; for the Non-Ego is, so to 
speak, only the creature of the Ego, can be known only by know¬ 
ing the Ego, is thus dependent upon the Ego, and, in fact, cannot 
be cognized at all except as the opposite or contradictory of the 
Ego. According to the logic of contraposition, whatever belongs 
to the Ego, the contradictory of it must belong to the Non-Ego. 
The universe and God, for instance, are only forms of the Non- 
Ego, and, as such, are but developments or creations of the ab¬ 
solute Ego, which is the principle or beginning of all things, ex¬ 
plaining all, affirming all, creating all. The story is told of Fichte 
informing his class that, in the next lecture, he should show how 
the Ego creates God. 

We now have two fundamental principles, a thesis and an anti¬ 
thesis, the Ego absolutely posited, and the Non-Ego absolutely 
^posited, the latter being obtained by a process of analysis, or 
self-diremption, from the former. But they contradict each other, 
and we need a third fundamental principle, to make a synthesis of 
the two, in such a manner as to cancel their opposition, and re¬ 
solve the two into a higher notion. As yet, the two are opposites, 
so that they cannot exist together. If we posit the one, we sub- 
late the other. If an absolute Ego exists, there cannot be a Non- 
Ego ; and if we assume an absolute Non-Ego, we destroy the idea 
of the Ego. How can being and non-being, reality and negation, 
be thought together without mutual destruction ? They must mu¬ 
tually limit each other. But in limitation , the category of quan¬ 
tity is already implied; for to limit anything is to deny the 
reality only of a part of it, not of the whole ; we deny a part of 


FICHTE. 


323 


it, we affirm the other part. Therefore, the notion of limit in¬ 
cludes in itself, and so reconciles, the notions of reality and nega¬ 
tion, (thus completing Kant’s second table of Categories, Reality, 
Negation, and Limitation,) and also includes the idea of divisibil¬ 
ity. In this manner arises our third fundamental principle, ex¬ 
pressed in this formula : “ In the Ego, I oppose to the divisible Ego 
a divisible Non-Ego.” Now the two opposites are identical in a 
portion of their marks or attributes, so that they no longer wholly 
contradict each other; on the other hand, there is ground for dis¬ 
tinguishing the two, inasmuch as each has some marks or attri¬ 
butes which are not possessed by the other. Of course, as each 
becomes limited, it ceases to be absolute; but so far as it is lim¬ 
ited, it becomes determinate, and thereby knowable. Omnis de¬ 
terminate est negatio. I begin to know what I am, as soon as I 
know what I am not; but as soon as there is anything which I 
am not, I cease to be absolute. Thus, I know at least one attri¬ 
bute of myself, namely, spirituality, when I know that I am not 
matter. Here the Non-Ego limits, and thereby determines, the 
Ego. On the other hand, by this same act, I begin to know mat¬ 
ter , as it now appears that it is not mind, or spirit; and so far as 
it is thus known, the Non-Ego is limited and determined by the 
Ego. So far as you and he are represented in my consciousness, 
you are a part of my Non-Ego ; an imaginary or ideal Non- 
Ego, observe! For all the Non-Ego merely exists and is de¬ 
veloped by the Ego. But so far as I distinguish myself, though 
only in thought, from you and him, I know myself better as a de¬ 
terminate personality, as one man among other men. I enter the 
world of phenomena as soon as I leave, in thought, the realm of 
the Absolute. But it is only a phenomenal and unreal, an ideal, 
world; for you, and he, and all other outward things, are only 
phantoms in my imagination; and when philosophy brushes away 
this universe of shadows, my personal being falls back into the 
Absolute, the one and all, the universal Mind. 

It is unnecessary to pursue the development of the theory far¬ 
ther. The third fundamental principle again resolves itself, on 
analysis, into these two contradictory propositions : 1. The Non- 
Ego determines or limits the Ego; 2. The Ego determines or 
limits the Non-Ego. According to the former, the Ego appears 
as passive, as acted upon ; and so far as its thoughts are shaped 
and modified by impressions made upon its senses from the phe¬ 
nomenal world without, it is cognitive ; and, therefore, this is the 
principle of theoretic knowledge. According to the latter, the 


324 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


'Ego determining the Non-Ego, the Ego is active, and the Moral 
Law, an element of its own consciousness, which does not come 
to us from the world without, but from our own inmost being, be¬ 
comes the law of the universe. The former principle creates Sci¬ 
ence ; the latter generates Ethics. Any one can build up a sys¬ 
tem of both by the method of the polar logic. The development 
of the theoretic and cognitive principle need not here be carried 
farther; and we may be satisfied with a very brief consideration 
of the peculiarity of Fichte’s ethical doctrine. 

In his conception of the grandeur and independence of the 
Moral Law, and in the rigor and severity of his application of 
this Law to the heart and the life, Fichte equals, and perhaps 
surpasses, Kant. In order to create knowledge, as we have seen, 
the Ego imposes limits upon itself, and conjures up an object, the 
Non-Ego, for the very purpose of restricting and determining its 
own activity. So far, then, it is finite and dependent. On the 
other hand, just so far as the Ego is the Absolute, creating itself 
through the very act of affirming its own existence, it is causa sui, 
and therefore infinite and eternal. Consequently, at the same 
moment, the Ego is both dependent and independent, both finite 
and infinite, both determined by the Object, and itself determining 
and restricting that Object. We cannot reconcile this contradic¬ 
tion by putting aside the Object altogether ; for, as intellect, the 
Ego needs to be thus limited. It needs something outside of it¬ 
self, an Anstoss, by impinging on which it may be awakened to 
definite consciousness. Then its only resource is, to recognize the 
existence, indeed, of the external Object as limiting, but also to 
assert its own original freedom and spontaneity; that it is not abso¬ 
lutely limited by any Object whatever which is not its own crea¬ 
tion ; and hence, that it has power in itself to go beyond any 
given limit, and to overcome all restraint. Because the Object 
never entirely disappears, the Ego always finds a resistance op¬ 
posed to it, and therefore its own pure activity is always a striv¬ 
ing and an effort. Yet this resistance is not absolute at any 
point, but is only partial, since it never entirely controls our ac¬ 
tivity ; while the striving from within is infinite, is renewed after 
any failure, being an impulse that constantly regenerates itself. 
The purpose of this striving, this impulse, speaking generally, is 
to bring about a conformity of the Object with the Ego, by 
overpowering the resistance which the former offers to the pure 
activity of the latter, and thereby enabling the Ego to act out it¬ 
self, and so accomplish its own perfection. But since this pur- 


FICHTE. 


325 


pose can never be perfectly carried out over all obstacles, the 
striving is directed not towards the actual world, or the universe 
as it is, which is dependent on the activity of the Non-Ego, but 
towards the world as it would be, if all reality in it were abso¬ 
lutely created through and by the Ego ; that is, it is turned to an 
ideal world and to acting in conformity to an ideal end and aim. 
When the Ego finds itself limited and hampered in this its effort, 
there arises in it a longing and an aspiration. If its action is 
conformed to this aspiration, there is created within it a feeling 
of contentment and self-approbation ; if otherwise, it has a sense 
of uneasiness and discontent; the Ego becomes aware that it is at 
variance with itself. But since that feeling of self-content does 
not spring from the accomplishment of any definite external ob¬ 
ject, but depends upon the agreement and harmony of the Ego 
with itself, the ideal impulse has its end and aim within itself. It 
is an absolute impulse, or a longing and impulse for its own sake ; 
or if we regard it as a law, it is an absolute law, a command 
which aims only to assert its own sovereignty; it is a Categorical 
Imperative. 

Here, then, we reach the point of union between Fichte’s ethi¬ 
cal system and that of Kant, and it is not necessary to carry the 
exposition farther. The philosophy of the Wissenschaftslehre, both 
in its purely speculative principles, and in the theory of morals 
which is founded upon them, owes most of its interest and impor¬ 
tance to the effect which it produced upon the subsequent course 
of speculation in Germany, and to the light which it casts upon 
the character and life of Fichte himself. Both Schelling and 
Hegel, with their numerous disciples and coadjutors, built in the 
main upon his foundations, worked by his method, and carried out 
to their remotest consequences the principles which he established. 
The logical filiation of doctrine which binds together the systems 
of these three great thinkers, together with their common obliga¬ 
tions to Kant, forms an instructive chapter in the history of the 
natural development of thought. But the philosophy of Fichte 
seems to me still more attractive when it is regarded as a key to 
the story of his life. Harsh, abstruse, and forbidding in its outer 
form, it is warmed and lighted up within by the glow of intense 
feeling and conviction which was characteristic of the man. As 
perfectly as in Spinoza’s case, his conduct illustrated his principles, 
his theory was the outgrowth of his character. He seems like 
one of the old Stoics in the loftiness of his aims, in the rigor of 
his thought, and in the severity of the demands which he made 


326 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


upon himself and others ; and better than any of the Stoics, he 
acted out what he professed. Pure reason, the logical evolution 
of abstract thought, dominated his whole being. His strong will, 
steeled in the school of adversity, placed itself unreservedly at the 
service of his intellect. No reference to the opinions or judg¬ 
ments of his fellow-men ever drew him aside from his fixed pur¬ 
pose, or made him falter in his efforts for its fulfilment; the 
allurements of interest or pleasure never affected his conduct. 
When he had once chosen his path, he followed it in the spirit of 
a fanatic or a martyr: to turn either to the right hand or the left 
seemed to him a dereliction of duty of which his nature was in¬ 
capable. His public life fell upon the period of the greatest hu¬ 
miliation of Prussia, after the battle of Jena had prostrated her at 
the feet of Napoleon. In that dark day, Fichte bated not a jot 
of heart or hope, but was unremitting in his efforts to rouse the 
spirit of the people, and prepare them for the struggle which was 
sure to come in order to shake off the oppressor’s yoke. No more 
eloquent voice than his was raised to stir the hearts of his country¬ 
men for the great War of Liberation. His noble “Addresses to 
the German Nation ” were delivered in the Academic theatre at 
Berlin early in 1808, and had much influence in kindling the pop¬ 
ular enthusiasm for the contest. Fichte did not live to witness 
the final triumph. While attending the sick in the military hos¬ 
pitals, his wife, who was laboring in the same cause, contracted an 
infectious fever ; and though she recovered, Fichte took the fever 
from her, and died on the 27th of January, 1814. It should be 
mentioned, that in his later publications, he considerably modified 
the character and tendency of his earlier speculative doctrines; 
and his philosophy, though resting, as he declared, on the same 
fundamental principles as before, became deeply infused with sub¬ 
limated mysticism and moral enthusiasm. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


The Philosophy of the Absolute : Schelling. 

What strange consequences followed the promulgation of the 
Critical Philosophy in Germany! Kant intended by it to give a 
death-blow to all systems of metaphysics which profess to extend 
human knowledge beyond the bounds of the finite, the limited, 
and the contingent. He undertook to bring it all within the field 
of experience. He rebuked the arrogance of those who proposed 
to push their inquiries beyond the phenomenal world, and to reach 
the universe of things as they really are, in themselves, apart from 
their manifestations to sense. He thought he had accomplished 
his end, by an exhaustive analysis of all the knowledge which is 
within our reach, and of the nature of the human mind, pointing 
out thereby its necessary limits and imperfections, and the inevita¬ 
ble illusions and sophistries in which we are involved when we 
attempt to realize our Transcendental Ideas, and, through them, to 
know the supersensual, the infinite, and the absolute. All this he 
supposed he had accomplished by that rigorous method, strict 
logic, and unsparing criticism, which alone can satisfy the claims of 
science. To adopt the language which forms the title of one of 
his most important works, he thought he had laid down the indis¬ 
pensable “ Prolegomena for every system of metaphysics which 
should hereafter assume to be considered as a science.” In still 
loftier terms, he announced that “ all metaphysicians are hereby 
formally suspended from office,” until they shall have demonstrated 
how “ synthetical cognitions a priori ” are possible, and how they 
may properly be extended beyond the boundaries of experience. 
Thus he seemed to himself to have exorcised forever the phantom 
of transcendental metaphysics. And this far-reaching enterprise 
appeared for a time, even to others, to be successful. His Crit¬ 
ical Philosophy, as soon as it became known, met with almost 
universal acceptance. Not only were his results acknowledged, 
but his principles and method, even his terminology, were adopted 
and copied; and, to a considerable extent, in all the schools of 


328 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Germany, as well as wherever speculative science has found a 
home, they reign paramount to this hour. 

But how vain are the expectations of man! Kant had, as it 
were, thrown out a challenge to the whole thinking world, to com¬ 
ply with his conditions, and still to establish, on an inexpugnable 
basis, a philosophy which should transcend experience, and should 
reveal the secrets of the world which lies beyond the realm of 
flesh and sense. And within forty years after the publication of 
the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” three great thinkers, Fichte, Schel- 
ling, and Hegel, two of them at least within Kant’s own lifetime, 
had taken up his gauntlet, and worked out, each in his own way, 
and in full compliance, as it seemed, with the severest conditions of 
science, a complete Philosophy of the Absolute. Perhaps I ought 
to add a fourth name to the list, that of Arthur Schopenhauer, a 
man of greater literary ability than either of the illustrious three 
just mentioned, certainly more arrogant and offensive in his tone 
than they, and whose metaphysical system, first published in 1819, 
though overlooked or neglected for many years, at last forced its 
way into general notice and reputation shortly before the author’s 
death, and is now admitted to a front rank in the philosophical 
literature of Germany, the richest in this department of all the 
countries in the world. Four Philosophies of the Absolute, each 
of great note and importance, and numbering a vast crowd of 
disciples in its day, within forty years of the time when Kant sol¬ 
emnly announced that he had demonstrated any such science to be 
impossible. And since the time of Aristotle, the man has not 
lived who had a better right to put forth so lofty a pretension 
than Immanuel Kant. 

In the last chapter, I endeavored to present an outline sketch 
of the earliest of these systems, that of Fichte, published within 
thirteen years after the appearance of the “ Critique of Pure 
Reason.” Before passing to the next, that of Schelling, it may 
be well, by the aid of what we have accomplished, to attempt to 
form as clear an idea as possible of what is meant by a “ Philoso¬ 
phy of the Absolute.” As we can thoroughly determine what a 
thing is only by showing what it is not, let us begin by contrasting 
such a philosophy with its opposite, the doctrine of Empiricism. 

He who makes experience his only law and guide begins and 
ends with facts ; that is, with what is most particular and concrete. 
These he proceeds to analyze, classify, and reduce to system and 
law, these words being ouly expressions for generalized facts. 
Thus, his course is always upward, from what is most particular and 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 


329 


determinate, from individual phenomena seen now and here, up to 
the loftiest generalizations, even, if you will, to ultimate principles ; 
though, properly speaking, his science admits nothing as ultimate, 
but always leaves room for corrections to be obtained from further 
experience. Thus, he accepts nothing as absolutely certain, or 
definitely determined; nothing as absolutely simple or one, because 
subsequent analysis may resolve what now appears as the most re¬ 
fractory element into its constituent parts ; nothing as a totality, 
or absolute whole, because nicer or more extended observation may 
add new links to the series ; nothing as an absolute beginning or 
an absolute end, because later inquiry may always disclose some¬ 
thing which lies beyond. Thus empirical science is always in¬ 
choate and imperfect, even glorifying itself on these shortcomings, 
because it thereby leaves the road open for progress , or at any 
rate, for subsequent effort. But corrections and extensions of the 
theory, like the materials for its original construction, can be 
drawn -only from the storehouse of nature, that is, from the obser¬ 
vation of facts. Empirical science often reasons downward, or 
deductively, it is true; but never from first pi’inciples; always 
from maxims which express former generalizations of experience. 
It never aims to go behind the facts, and therefore never seeks 
for a First Cause of them, nor for a Final Cause, or the purpose 
why they exist. It deals only with secondary causes, or physical 
laws; with relative, not absolute, antecedents ; with phenomena, 
or what appears, not with noumena, or what really is; with the 
actual consequents of phenomena, and not with any purposes which 
they were intended to subserve. It does not seek to penetrate the 
mysteries of existence, or to explain how things began to be, or 
why they manifest themselves thus, rather than otherwise. 

Now the briefest explanation which can be given of the Philos¬ 
ophy of the Absolute is to say, that it is the direct opposite of 
Empiricism in every one of the particulars just mentioned ; and 
perhaps this is as good an illustration as can be found of the truth 
of the old scholastic adage, omnis determinatio est negatio. Instead 
of beginning with the particular, the concrete, and the determinate, 
it aims to start from what is most universal, most abstract, and least 
determinate. Instead of rising from facts to laws, and from these to 
principles, it endeavors to posit, first of all, a principnim principio- 
rum, an absolute first Cause, absolute unity, absolute totality, the 
Infinite and the Absolute, universal substance, absolutely indeter¬ 
minate existence, all in one; and from this absolute commencement 
to unfold and develop, step by step, all degrees and varieties of 


330 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


actual and determinate existence in the universe of thought and of 
real being. We need not be surprised, then, to hear Hegel declare 
that the Philosophy of the Absolute, as taught in his Logic, is “ a 
representation of God as he was in his eternal essence, before the 
creation of the world or of a finite spirit; ” as “ all things were 
made by Him,” and “ He is before all things, and by Him all 
things consist.” Having obtained or assumed this absolutely first 
principle, thus wholly indeterminate, the problem is, to trace the 
necessary and continuous development from it of all modes of de¬ 
terminate existence and determinate thought, thus explaining how 
all things began to be, and why they appear under the respective 
phenomenal forms in which they now manifest themselves to con¬ 
sciousness. 

Thus, even Cartesianism is a sort of crude and imperfect attempt 
to construct such a philosophy ; for, beginning with the single da¬ 
tum, which skepticism itself cannot doubt, namely, pure thought, 
or thought in the abstract, it endeavors to deduce from this, suc¬ 
cessively, the thinker’s own existence, the being of a God, the 
trustworthiness of our faculties, and hence the universe of things 
as actually known, and in which we live. But the attempt was a 
lame one; for after taking successfully the first two steps, thought 
and the thinker, Descartes unwittingly introduces an empirical 
element, a mere fact learned by internal observation, namely, that 
among other ideas in the thinker’s mind, there is one of an infinite 
and perfect Being; and from this idea as an effect, he reasons up¬ 
ward, after the manner of the Empiricists again, to the actual ex¬ 
istence of such a Being. Spinoza, resolved to be more rigorous 
in his logic, adopted all the forms and precautions of pure mathe¬ 
matics, and therefore set out with a definition, an arbitrary one, of 
an abstract idea, universal Substance, as that which exists and is 
conceived in and of itself, and therefore does not need a prior 
conception of anything else. As this definition is so framed as to 
exclude in the outset all individual and real objects, and as in the 
evolution of the system from this one principle every empirical 
datum is carefully excluded, Spinoza’s conclusions, of course, turn 
out to be just as arbitrary and unreal as his premises. His theory 
of pantheism is the rigorous logical development of a mere phan¬ 
tasm of his own thought, having no connection or similarity with 
the phenomenal world actually present to sense and consciousness, 
the genesis of which it was his duty to explain. 

Fichte was more consistent than Descartes, and had a clearer 
apprehension than Spinoza of the nature of the task which lay 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 


331 


before him; for he enjoyed the great advantage of beginning his 
work after Kant had carefully distinguished and laid down the con¬ 
ditions of the problem. I think the Wissenschaftslehre is, on the 
whole, more complete and systematic, more severely reasoned out 
and faithfully tracked to its remotest consequences, than any Phi¬ 
losophy of the Absolute which the wit of man has ever devised. 
It is not so poetical a system, not so gorgeously set forth with all 
the eloquence and illustrations which a glowing imagination could 
supply, as that of Schelling. It is not such a miracle of ingenuity 
and depth of thought, of minuteness and comprehensiveness com¬ 
bined, as that of Hegel. But it is more frank and simple, so to 
speak, than either; it is more faithfully traced out to its legitimate 
and inevitable conclusions. Instead of attempting to deduce every 
thing from an idea , which, because wholly indeterminate, is inde¬ 
finable, and therefore equivalent to zero, Fichte began with the 
Ego positing itself, or affirming its own existence ; and thus secured 
an indefinite and consequently unlimited activity, an absolute and 
infinite Ego, wherewith to explain the secret of creation. Still, 
the actual evolution of a real universe of determinate beings from 
such a blank conception of pure activity, the mere phantom of a 
God, remained just as incomprehensible as ever. There is nothing 
to determine why this absolute Ego, this pure activity, should be 
developed into one form of determinate existence rather than any 
other, should create this world instead of any conceivable universe, 
or no universe at all. It is merely the x of an insoluble equation, 
a pure activity out of relation to anything, and so out of relation 
to any conceivable product, or to any one form of existence more 
than to any other. Hence, Fichte is still driven to the usual sub¬ 
terfuge of these philosophers of the Absolute. Unable to explain 
the creation of a real universe, of actual finite beings, such as .we 
are, he resolves existence itself into a mere dream, and all finite 
and determined being into a mere shadow of the Absolute. The 
Ego is then supposed to spin an imaginary Non-Ego out of its own 
thought, a still dimmer reflection of its own shadowy existence, and 
against this unreal background, becomes itself the poor spectre of 
determinate and individual being. These system-mongers succeed 
in explaining the process, only through denying the fact, of crea¬ 
tion. 

The philosophy of Kant and Fichte represented the destructive 
tendencies, the deification of pure reason, the moral enthusiasm, 
and the lofty hopes which characterized the first French Revolu¬ 
tion. The enthusiasts of that period hoped to build a new world 


332 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


out of the ruins of the past; to demolish all existing institutions, 
and to create new forms of society, in which truth, freedom, and 
justice should prevail. They rejected all that was positive and tra¬ 
ditional in society and the State, in religion and morality, while 
they deified individual freedom. The subjective and rationalistic 
methods of the Critical Philosophy, the theory of the Wissenschafts- 
lehre , in which the universal Ego, as pure activity, asserts its own 
freedom in limiting and determining the Non-Ego, the world with¬ 
out, which is its own creation and thus its subject and vassal, har¬ 
monized with these revolutionary movements, and aided in complet¬ 
ing them. But a reaction soon began in Germany, where those 
who dreaded change sought refuge in the traditions and institutions 
of the past, inculcated reverence for a higher authority than that 
of man, and a mystic recognition of the unseen agencies which direct 
the course of nature and history. The religious sentiment, offended 
by the negative results of Rationalism, clung all the more firmly to 
its positive belief, and Catholicism raised a victorious reaction 
against the Protestant principle, so that some of the most distin¬ 
guished names in German literature, such as Gorres, Haller, Fried¬ 
rich Schlegel, Muller, and Hardenberg (Novalis), became prose¬ 
lytes to the Romish church. Poetry also found inspiration and 
materials in the consecrated traditions of the past, in the mysteries 
of nature and of the human mind ; and thus was formed the Ro¬ 
mantic school in literature, to which the poets, Tieqk, Novalis, 
Schlegel, Stolberg, and others belonged. The arts also, and to 
6ome extent the sciences, followed the same direction. Painting, 
sculpture, and architecture looked for guidance to the remains of 
mediaeval art, and for inspiration to the fervent Catholicism of 
earlier times. Historians turned their inquiries from the recent to 
the more remote past, to the Middle Ages, with their stories of 
miracles and legends of the saints, and even back to hoary an¬ 
tiquity, and the primitive religious systems of the East. The rapid 
progress which the physical sciences were then making also tended 
to develop this taste for the recondite and the marvellous. While 
observation and experiment were heaping up new and marvellous 
facts, philosophy attempted to give unity and system to these facts 
by interpenetrating them with speculative ideas, and thus to bind 
together the disjecta membra of nature into a living organism. 
Most interesting among the recent discoveries were those which 
concerned the mysterious phenomena of electricity and magnetism. 
Chemistry, which was then making rapid progress, seemed to throw 
new light upon the internal operations of nature and the mutual 
play of its secret formative agencies. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 


383 


All this tended to correct the morbid tendency to introspection 
and Idealism- which characterized the school of Kant and Fichte. 
Instead of regarding the Ego alone as real and active, and even 
as the Absolute itself, the Non-Ego, or the whole outer world, ex¬ 
isting merely in idea, and imagined for no other purpose than to 
render the Ego more determinate, by setting up over against it 
a phantom from which it could be discriminated in thought, — in¬ 
stead of this subjective and egoistic theory, I say, there was a reac¬ 
tion towards the objective pantheism of Spinoza. Instead of mak¬ 
ing outward nature to be the mere creature of human thought, the 
tendency now was to absorb man into nature, and to regard his 
individual existence as lost among the countless phenomena, the 
myriad developments, of the mighty mother, the universal Sub¬ 
stance, the One and the All. This new turn of speculation, how¬ 
ever, was not in the direction of Materialism ; far from it. Nature 
was still ideal, still a mere creation of universal thought or mani¬ 
festation of the Absolute. But Nature was now viewed objectively, 
as one organic whole, independent and self-sustained, a system of 
forces and agencies necessarily acting upon and limiting each other, 
yet all derived from one source and working by one law. Indi¬ 
vidual mind was but one bubble floating on the surface of this 
resistless current, and driven round in its eternal vortices. Realism 
became the passion of the day, and a sort of pantheistic worship 
of the outer world and sensible nature was substituted for the fa¬ 
natical Egoism which inspired the system of the Wissenschaftslehre. 
Among the poets, Goethe perhaps best set forth this realistic and 
objective aspect of nature, whilst Schiller was still absorbed in 
dreamy and enthusiastic idealism. 

Schelling was a precocious genius, the boy-Plato of Germany, 
who achieved eminence as a great metaphysical thinker while he 
was still a youth at the university. He had the fervid imaginatiou 
and lively fancy of a poet, rather than the critical understanding 
of a philosopher. He was a great master also of varied and or¬ 
nate disquisition in lofty and eloquent prose, richly illustrated by a 
wide range of reading and considerable acquisitions in science ; 
and he thus fascinated and warmed his hearers, even when his turn 
for mysticism considerably obscured the connection of his thoughts. 
He published two remarkable philosophical treatises in 1794-1795, 
before he had left college, and when he was as yet only twenty 
years old. In these he appeared as still a disciple of Fichte, 
though aspiring rather to amplify and correct, than merely to ex¬ 
pound, the doctrines of his master. But he soon worked himself 


334 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


free from this dependence, and, both in his lectures and other pub¬ 
lications, began to teach a philosophy which no other person than 
himself was capable of originating. His system passed through 
no less than five successive stages, varying widely iff the course of 
its development, so that it is impossible to give any self-consistent 
view of it as one whole. His life, also, presents two distinct pe¬ 
riods of great literary activity, separated from each other by a long 
interval. Before he was thirty years old, that is, before 1805, he 
had published all the works on which his fame really depends, and 
achieved through them a world-wide reputation, his theories largely 
coloring not only the metaphysic thought, but also, to a consider¬ 
able extent, the physical science, of all his German countrymen. 
Then, though continuing to hold high academic position at Munich 
and Erlangen, his literary activity seemed to come to an end, and 
he maintained an almost unbroken silence for over thirty-five 
years, the very period during which his great rival, though former 
associate and intimate college friend, Hegel, was developing his 
system of metaphysics, and through that, and subsidiary publica¬ 
tions, was making himself a power in the state, and exercising an 
influence, not only in philosophy, but in history, politics, and theol¬ 
ogy, such as hardly any mere speculatist has equalled for more than 
a century. Coldly and silently Schelling stood aloof, and made 
no sign, while Hegelianism was running its brilliant but short¬ 
lived career, agitating all North Germany, and thereby affecting 
the course of thought throughout civilized Europe. At length, 
in 1841, nine years after the death of Hegel, Schelling emerged 
from his .retirement, accepted Hegel’s vacant post as professor of 
philosophy at Berlin, and, amid the generally excited attention 
and expectation of the whole public, began to lecture again with 
all the enthusiasm, eloquence, and fertility of his youth. Thus, to 
adopt Hartmann’s striking figure, Schelling was the morning star 
which heralded the uprising sun of Hegel; and also the evening 
star, which continued to shine on after that sun had set. Still, the 
high expectations of those who had called him from his retirement 
terminated generally in disappointment. Those who heard him, 
indeed, were fascinated by his eloquence; but they brought away 
very obscure notions of a mystic theogony and cosmogony, which 
were substituted for the more definite metaphysical speculations in 
which his youth delighted, and on which his fame chiefly depends. 
These lectures of his old age were published after his death in two 
or three bulky volumes; but I fancy few persons have had cour¬ 
age enough to read them through. The philosophy of his earlier 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 


335 


days is all that I shall undertake to consider, and this only in a 
cursory manner. 

Schelling’s poetical imagination, and his interest in the creations 
of art and the phenomena of outward nature, felt the full force of 
those influences which I have described as constituting, at the be¬ 
ginning of this century, a reaction against excessive Idealism and 
Egoism, and as leading to a sort of dreamy worship of external 
nature and mystic absorption into it. Through Coleridge, who 
knew enough of Schelling to pilfer some of his thoughts, though 
not enough to understand him as a whole, these influences were 
imported, so to speak, into English literature; and they constitute 
the very spirit and essence of that portion of the poetry of Words¬ 
worth which belongs to this period, and which is pantheistic 
throughout. From him I might quote almost at random in con¬ 
firmation of this remark : — 


u To him, the meanest flower that blows could give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” 


And again: — 


“ The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, 

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite; — a feeling and a love 
That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, or any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye.” 


And still more directly expressive of the objective pantheism of 
Schelling, we hear him say or sing : — 

“ I have felt 

.... a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean, and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 

A motion and a spirit that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
" A lover of the meadows and the woods, 

And mountains; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, both what they half create, 

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize, 

In nature and the language of the sense, 

The anchor of my purest thoughts, .... and soul 
Of all my moral being.” 


True, Wordsworth has carried this “ worship ” of nature to an 


336 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


unreasonable and ridiculous excess, and fallen into “dizzy rap¬ 
tures,” not only over what is beautiful and grand in the outward 
world, but over many low and paltry objects, which no poetry can 
elevate above their intrinsic meanness and vulgarity. Thus, in 
one of his walks, he sees 

“ A crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” 

He tells us that 


“ I gazed, and gazed, but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought.” 

And he concludes, in the very jingle of Mother Goose,— 

“ And then my heart with pleasure fills, 

And dances with the daffodils.” 

Still more curious is the influence of Schelling’s Philosophy of 
the Absolute on the physical science of his own day, and even of 
these later times. In respect to the poets, it may well be, that of 
the realistic and pantheistic tendencies which they began to mani¬ 
fest some seventy years ago, Schelling’s metaphysics were not so 
much a cause as an expression and exponent. There was a com¬ 
mon influence at work, both upon him and upon them. Not so 
in physical science, in which he was to a great extent an inspirer, 
if not a teacher, even an originator of novel doctrines which 
opened lines of research and inquiry heretofore untried. He 
taught the physiologists and naturalists of Germany, instead of 
merely accumulating facts of observation, to arrange them into 
systems at least provisionally true, under the guidance of what 
might seem to be purely fanciful speculation. Oken and Agassiz 
were only the most conspicuous among a crowd of men engaged in 
similar pursuits, who, in their earlier years, were pupils of Schel- 
ling, and derived from him not only inspiration, but pregnant hints 
of what they afterwards worked out in detail. I suppose the 
modern doctrines of the Metamorphosis of Plants, or Vegetable 
Morphology, of the Homologies of the Skeleton, of the plan of 
God in the animal kingdom, and even of the Darwinian hypotheses 
of the Origin of Species and Pangenesis, may be traced very 
directly to Schelling’s Philosophy of the Absolute. All these 
theories or hypotheses, call them what you please, are not facts , 
but ideas about the relations, the arrangement, and the genesis of 
facts. Strictly speaking, they do not belong to Zoology, which is 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 


337 


the science of living things as they now are, actually manifested to 
sense, but to Cosmogony, or the doctrine of the origin of things. 

In proof that the germs, at any rate, of all these theories are 
to be found in Schelling, I will quote, not Schelling’s own words, 
which could only be done at too great length, but the words of 
Schwegler, one of the best of his German expounders and critics, 
who, in the passage cited, has no reference to the point which I am 
now seeking to establish, but is merely abbreviating and explaining 
his master’s doctrine. 

“Organization,” then, Schelling teaches, “is just as original as 
matter. Inorganic nature, as such, does not exist. It is actually 
organized, and is, as it were, the universal germ, out of which or¬ 
ganization proceeds. The organization of each body is but the 
internal evolution of the body itself; the earth, by its own evolv¬ 
ing, becomes animal and plant. And yet the organic world has 
not formed itself out of the inorganic, but was, at least poten¬ 
tially, present in it from the beginning. What now lies before us 
apparently as inorganic matter, is the residuum of the organic 
metamorphosis, — is what was unable at the first trial to become 
organic. The brain of man is the highest result of the whole 
organic metamorphosis of the earth. It will be seen, then, that 
we maintain the internal identity of all things, and the potential 
presence of all in all; wherefore we regard the so-called dead 
matter as only a plant-world, and an animal-world, asleep; a world 
which, at some future time, the absolute identity of its essence with 
what has gone before may possibly animate and awake to a new 
phase of life.” 

Again, he says, “ matter and mind, exhibiting the same conflict 
of opposed forces, must themselves be capable of union in a higher 
identity. There is the same Absolute in nature as in mind, and 
their harmony is no mere reflection of thought. If you maintain 
that it is we who only transfer. this idea to nature, then never 
upon your soul has any dream dawned of what, for us, nature is 
and should be. Nature shall be the visible soul, and soul the in¬ 
visible nature. Nature appears thus as the counterpart of mind, 
and produced by the mind; only that the mind may, through its 
agency, attain to a pure perception of itself — to self-consciousness. 
Hence the series of grades or steps in nature, in which all the 
stations of intellect, on its way to self-consciousness, are stereo¬ 
typed. For this reason there is something symbolical in every 
thing organic ; every plant is a corporealized throb of the soul. 
The main peculiarities of organic growth, intussusception, or self- 
22 


338 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


formation from within outwards, adaptation of means to ends, 
variety of interpenetration of form and matter, are all so many 
leading features of the mind. As in the mind there is an infinite 
effort towards self-organization, so also in the external world a 
similar tendency must display itself. The whole system of the 
universe, therefore, is a species of organization, formed from a 
centre outwards, and rising ever from lower to higher stages.” 

According to that law of thought which I have often cited, the 
knowledge of opposites or correlatives is one, because what we 
really think in such cases is, not the two terms, but the relation 
between them, which, so far as they are contrasted with each 
other, is the essence of both. Hence, as has been well remarked, 
“ when we say Finite and Infinite, Real and Ideal, Time and 
Eternity, Absolute and Relative, Conditioned and Unconditioned, 
Mind and Matter, etc., we divide the one object of our thought; 
each term is the correlative and complement of the other, and 
we understand it only through distinguishing it from that other. 
But there must be a higher unity, which contains both terms of 
the idea; a reason which makes it possible to think them both in 
one; and this is what metaphysicians call the Absolute.” It is at 
once their producing cause and their essence, the common root 
whence these opposites spring. The broadest and clearest dis¬ 
tinction between the Relative and the Absolute is, that the former 
is, and the latter is not, subject to the Principle of Sufficient 
Reason, that is, to the question Why ? which involves its relation 
to some other phenomenon. Hence we cannot directly know or 
be conscious of the Absolute as such; for knowledge or conscious¬ 
ness necessarily involves the relation between the act of thinking 
and what is thought of, between Subject and Object. The Abso¬ 
lute, therefore, is inconceivable as such; but the necessity of its 
existence or reality, — the mere fact thqt it is, — may be indirectly 
apprehended by logical inference, or, as Schelling would have it, 
by intellectual intuition, by falling back behind consciousness. 
Here, as I have already said, Schelling’s system begins to diverge 
from that of the Wissenschaftslehre. Granted, that Being is the 
product of Thought, or in other words, that the Non-Ego exists 
only in and through the Ego ; the converse proposition is equally 
certain, that Thought is evolved from Being, that the Ego is a 
product either of the Non-Ego, or, of a common element in which 
the two are one. In the first moment, argues Schelling, in which 
I become conscious of myself, I perceive the external world as 
already existing by the side of me, and only by distinguishing my- 


SCHELLING. 


339 


self from it, can I become aware of my own existence. Hence, 
before the dawn of consciousness, before consciousness becomes 
possible, Nature must already have been constructed unconsciously, 
must have been spontaneously self-evolved by the Absolute, which 
is the common ground both of the Ego and the Non-Ego. 

The relation in which Schelling stands to other philosophers, as 
well as to Fichte, is easily conceived and expressed. The Ideal¬ 
ists identify matter with mind; the Materialists identify mind 
with matter; Schelling identifies these two forms of identification 
with each other, and therefore properly calls his system the 
Philosophy of Absolute Identity. His “ Absolute ” is the undivided 
unity of Subject and Object, of Thought and Being. The system 
of Fichte, as I have shown, was based in the main upon the funda¬ 
mental principles of Descartes; and in like manner, Schelling, 
though he works by a different method, is in great part a repro¬ 
duction of Spinoza. The phenomenal world both of matter and 
mind is resolved, in the one case, into a vague abstraction, that of 
universal Substance, and in the other, into an inconceivable back¬ 
ground of real being, called the Absolute. 

At whatever point a Philosophy of the Absolute may begin, it 
must soon abut upon that inevitable antithesis of thought, or Du¬ 
ality of Consciousness, as Hamilton calls it, which may be vari¬ 
ously expressed as the Ego and the Non-Ego, Subject and Object, 
Mind and Matter, Spirit and Nature. As this Philosophy seeks 
for absolute unity in all things, for a seminal first principle, or ab¬ 
solute God, one in his eternal essence, from which, or from whom, 
all the seeming variety and multiplicity of the phenomenal world 
may be deduced or derived, the first problem presented to it is, 
How to resolve this apparent Duality into Unity. This is no easy 
task; for no sooner does the Philosopher think he has accom¬ 
plished it, than the old difficulty inevitably reappears; for it results 
from the very nature, the necessary limitations, of human, and 
therefore finite, thought. When I attempt to think or conceive 
this absolute unit, it becomes the Object of my thought, and 
thereby is distinguished from, and set over against, the Subject 
thinking ; and therefore it ceases to be absolutely one and all, for 
it coexists with the Mind that conceives it and strives to contem¬ 
plate its essence. The difficulty is inevitable, for human thought 
itself depends upon this antithesis between the Subject knowing 
and the Object known. Then the Absolute of my thought is not 
the true Absolute; since the former exists only as one member of 
a Duality; all other things may be developed from it; but there 


340 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


is one thing which it cannot generate, and which is at least co¬ 
equal with it; and that is, the thinking Mind by which it is itself 
conceived. Hence, sooner or later, a Philosophy of the Absolute 
always takes the form of Idealism. N 

The doctrine of the Wissenschaftslehre is, that the Ego is the 
true Absolute. At first, this Absolute Ego cannot be conceived 
as such, or as Absolute; for since it is (at the outset, or before 
the creation even of an imaginary world) both One and All, and 
All in One, there is nothing from which it can be contradis¬ 
tinguished, and thereby thought. But though inconceivable, it can 
act; and it does act; first, by positing itself, or affirming its own 
existence, and secondly, by positing a fictitious Non-Ego, an unreal 
world, existing outside of itself. It is, therefore, first appre¬ 
hended as pure and unlimited activity, exerted with perfect free¬ 
dom ; and then as the product of that activity, since there cannot 
be action without an agent. Then it creates an unreal Non-Ego, 
a phantom universe, peoples it with imaginary human beings, and 
thereby becomes conscious of itself as a determinate individual ex¬ 
istence, so far as it is discriminated from these spectres, which are 
its own creation. In fact, therefore, I am not myself as a deter¬ 
minate individual, but I am only one manifestation of the Absolute. 
Thus, Fichte’s philosophy is Idealism first exaggerated into Ego¬ 
ism, and then sublimated into Pantheism, or rather Nihilism, which 
is the usual conclusion of a Philosophy of the Absolute. 

Schelling argues at length, and with much. acuteness and sub- 
tilty of thought, against the Fichtean system. He objects, that 
the action of the Ego, in setting up over against itself an imagin¬ 
ary Non-Ego, cannot be regarded as the result of pure spontane¬ 
ity, exerted with perfect freedom. The most resolute Idealist, he 
says, cannot avoid considering the Ego as dependent, that is, as 
constrained to form at least a mental picture of the outer world; 
for there is only too much in this world which the Ego, had it 
been free, would have constituted otherwise. The necessity to 
which it is thus subjected is an internal aud blind necessity, not 
proceeding from any conscious exercise of the will, but grounded 
in the inmost nature of the Ego. Nothing hinders me from going 
back in thought, therefore, with this Ego, which has now become 
conscious of itself in me, to a preceding moment, when as yet it 
was not conscious; and from assuming the reality of something 
lying beyond the now existing consciousness, and of an activity 
previously exerted, of which I become aware only through its re¬ 
sult. This activity cannot be anything else than the labor of com- 


SCHELLING. 


341 


ing to one’s self, the very act of first becoming conscious, which is 
therefore not known in itself, but only in its consequence. This 
mere result or consequence, which alone is present to conscious¬ 
ness, is that very mental picture of an outer world, which the Ego 
cannot regard as produced by itself, for it existed simultaneously 
with the Ego, and afforded the only means through which the 
Ego could first become self-conscious. This inseparable union of 
myself with the necessary presentation of a universe external to 
myself, says Schelling, was the fact which I sought to explain 
through a transcendental past existence, preceding the origin of 
empirical consciousness. For I first know that I am through the 
act of coming to myself; and this coming to myself implies a pre¬ 
ceding and unconscious state, out of myself, from which I came. 
The first condition of the Ego, therefore, is a state of being outside 
of its proper or individual self. Because it comes from a region 
lying behind or above consciousness, it 'is not yet the individual 
Ego; but it first becomes individual, and thereby self-conscious, 
through the act of coming to itself. Therefore, the state lying 
outside of consciousness, and preceding the affirmation that I am, 
is one and the same for all human beings; it is the one universal 
Substance of Spinoza. Only when it emerges from this primal 
and unconscious state of being, does it first become in every one 
his Ego, his individual Ego, because it then first comes to itself, 
and distinctly says, I am. Certainly, when it first becomes capa¬ 
ble of this utterance wherewith its individual and separate life 
begins, it no longer remembers the road which it has traversed in 
order to reach this goal. Since self-consciousness first appears at 
the end of the journey, it must have passed over the whole route 
unconsciously, and without knowing it. The individual Ego holds 
in mind only the monuments, as it were, the faint mementos, of the 
road which it has passed over, but remembers not the road itself. 
And for this very reason, it is the duty of philosophy to recon¬ 
struct the forgotteu past, and enable the mind to recall its previous 
history. The Ego must be enabled consciously to retrace its 
whole unconscious progress, from the beginning, when it was not 
as yet separated from universal and indeterminate being, up to the 
close, when it first became self-conscious. In so far, Philosophy 
is nothing else than dvd/xv^o-is— a reminiscence of what it has 
done and suffered in its universal and pre-individual state ; a re¬ 
sult which harmonizes well enough with the well-known doctrine 
of Plato. 

We can now see, that, as the doctrine of Fichte is closely allied 


342 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


with that of Descartes, being, in fact, little more than an abbre- 
viated German version of Cogito, scilicet sum , so the Philosophy of 
Schelling is in the main a mere reproduction of Spinoza. Alike in 
his premises and in his results, Schelling repeats the work of his 
Jewish predecessor. By mere definition, that is, by an arbitrary 
assumption, Spinoza holds that “ the Absolute,” in which all 
things are fused into one, is universal Substance, illimitable, inde¬ 
terminate, and eternal, all individual phenomena, whether of ex¬ 
tension or thought, being only its transitory modes or affections. 
In a similar manner, Schelling teaches that “ the Absolute ” is an 
inconceivable centre and source of being, lying behind conscious¬ 
ness, and manifesting itself solely through its opposite poles, Sub¬ 
ject and Object; and according as the one or the other of these 
predominates, Matter or Mind in various degrees becomes appre¬ 
hensible. In order that “ the Absolute ” thus conceived, or thus 
left inconceivable, may not seem to be an arbitrary invention, he 
is obliged to contrive a new mental faculty, that of intellectual 
intuition, which only artists and men of genius are endowed with, 
and which is competent spiritually to discern what lies far beyond 
the reach of consciousness, namely, the identity of Subject with 
Object, and thereby of One with All. 

Obviously, then, Schelling’s ambition was to reverse the Fichtean 
process, and to reestablish the Non-Ego in its dignity and rights, 
by developing the Subject from the Object, or Spirit from Nature, 
instead of the converse. But here a difficulty immediately arises. 
The Non-Ego does not affirm its own existence by positing itself. 
As Nature without Spirit, as Object independent of a Subject, it is 
both dumb and inert. Chaos is voiceless and inactive, a mere waste 
of waters, before the spirit of God moves over the face of the 
deep. Hence Schelling was forced to adopt the theory, that both 
the Ego and the Non-Ego are merely phenomenal manifestations 
of the true Absolute, which lies behind or beneath them, and which 
develops itself by a constantly repeated process of self-diremption, 
forever splitting itself into two opposite poles, and thereby succes¬ 
sively rising into more distinct degrees of difference and Self-Con¬ 
sciousness, and into higher stages of being. Polar logic, the 
grand invention, the universal method, of this class of metaphysi¬ 
cians, is again pressed into the service. The Absolute is the mid¬ 
dle point, the centre of indifference of the magnet; and therefore, 
in itself, is no magnet at all, but first becomes such by setting its 
two extremities over against each other, as North and South poles, 
or Thesis and Antithesis, the centre, or the true Absolute, existing 


SCHELLING. 


343 


only as the synthesis of these opposites. Break the magnet in two 
at this medial point, and each half at once becomes a perfect mag¬ 
net in itself, with its own set of opposite poles. Repeat this pro¬ 
cess indefinitely in thought, since any object of thought can be 
conceived, or become determinate, only through its discrimination 
from, aud opposition to, some other object, and you have the suc¬ 
cessive stages of individual and determinate being, which are the 
phenomenal manifestations of being per se, or All in One, which 
lies at the centre. The Ego and the Non-Ego, Subject and Ob¬ 
ject, are only the first of these manifestations, the product of the 
first self-diremption of the Absolute. 

But here Hamilton’s objection comes in, and is really fatal to 
the whole theory. In order to reach this point of indifference, and 
thereby to apprehend the Absolute as such, before its first act of 
self-diremption, we must by abstraction annihilate both the Object 
and Subject of consciousness. But then, what remains ? Nothing ; 
a mere blank. The abstraction of the contrast between Subject 
and Object is a negation of consciousness; “ and the negation of 
consciousness is the annihilation of thought itself. The alternative 
is therefore unavoidable ; either, finding the Absolute, we lose our¬ 
selves ; or, retaining self and individual consciousness, we do not 
reach the Absolute.” This objection was also wittily expressed by 
Hegel, when he said that “ in Schelling’s philosophy, the Absolute 
appears as if it had been shot out of a pistol.” It is made sud¬ 
denly to appear, without any reason why it is there, or why it is 
anything, since it is inconceivable. And as we can attempt to con¬ 
ceive it only by abstracting from all differences whereby one thing 
is distinguished from another, “ it is but the night in which all 
cows are black ; ” and since all things are successively expressed 
as one or the other of the two poles into which it is constantly 
dividing itself, it is “ only the method of a painter, who has but 
two colors on his palette, red and green, the former to be used on 
historical pieces, the latter on landscapes.” 

All this is frankly acknowledged by Schelling. He admits that 
consciousness is a condition of knowledge, and therefore that a 
conscious knowledge of the Absolute, to us, is impossible. As a 
conscious and understanding being, man can apprehend only the 
Relative ; for every object of his thought must be conceived as rel¬ 
ative, if not to any other object of thought, at least to himself, as 
the thinking subject. The Absolute can be apprehended only by 
a sinking back out of consciousness. Only if man be himself 
the Infinite, can the Infinite be known by him. “ Nec sentire 


344 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Deum , nisi qui pars ipse Deorum est.” None can feel God, who 
does not himself share the Godhead. 

But Schelling asserts that there is a capacity of knowledge 
above or behind consciousness, and higher than the Understanding, 
and that this knowledge is competent to human reason, because 
this Reason itself is identical with the Absolute. In this act of 
knowledge, which he calls the Intellectual Intuition, as distinguished 
from the intuitions of sense, there exists no distinction of Subject 
and Object, no contrast of knowledge with existence; all difference 
is lost in mere indifference, all plurality in simple unity. The 
Absolute itself is identified with the Reason which apprehends it. 
Because man is himself a manifestation of the Absolute, he can 
know the source and essence of his being only by falling back 
behind the limits and conditions of his phenomenal existence, and 
knowing himself as he really is, — God. All things are God ; 
u in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Of course, the 
act is ineffable ; it is “ the vision and the faculty divine.” He 
who is incapable of it is incompetent for philosophy. This is 
what Cousin means by his doctrine of the impersonality of Reason. 
That by which I apprehend the truth, he says, is not my reason, 
nor your reason, but Reason itself, as such, or in the abstract; 
also, the truth itself, thus known, is not my or your truth, but 
truth as such, or the Absolute, identical with the faculty which 
apprehends it. 

In teaching this doctrine, that human reason has a power of 
intellectual intuition, as distinguished from the intuitions of sense, — 
a doctrine, we may remark, which is earnestly controverted by 
Kant, — Schelling’s tone is somewhat lofty and supercilious, being 
strongly marked with the arrogance which characterizes most of 
his earlier writings. Philosophy, he says, just as much as Art, de¬ 
pends upon a capacity for creation, that is, upon a power first of 
producing its object, and then of reflecting or reproducing that 
object through an image or representation of it. The only differ¬ 
ence is, that the productive power in Art is directed towards the 
external world, in order to reproduce there in sensible images 
what it has created ; while in Philosophy, its gaze is turned in¬ 
wards, in order to reflect its products in an intellectual intuition. 
Hence, the aesthetic sense is the proper organ through which phi¬ 
losophy exercises its functions, and just for this reason, the science 
of art is the true organon of philosophy in general. There are 
only two outlets from the world of commonplace realities; the 
first is poetry, which transfers us to an ideal world; the second is 


SCHELLING. 


345 


philosophy, which causes the outer universe to disappear from our 
vision altogether. It does not appear, says Schelling, why a capac¬ 
ity for Philosophy should be any more common than a capacity 
for Art, especially in that class of men who, either from their ex¬ 
ercise of memory, than which nothing more quickly kills out all 
creative power, or from their habits of formal speculation, which 
benumb their imaginative faculty, have completely lost their aes¬ 
thetic sense. Mere reflection, he further argues, is a malady of 
the intellect, and when it extends its power over the whole man, 
it kills down to its roots his whole spiritual life. It is constantly 
leading us astray even in the conduct of affairs, and it blinds our 
perception of the ordinary objects around us. Its dividing power 
is not confined to the phenomenal world ; but when it separates 
from this the spiritual principle, it fills the intellectual world also 
with chimeras, against which, because they lie beyond the province 
of reason, we cannot wage successful war. It makes permanent 
the separation between Subject and Object, between man and the 
world, when it considers the latter as a noumenon, or ding an sich, 
which neither intuition nor imagination, neither understanding nor 
reason, is able to reach or comprehend. Opposed to it stands true 
philosophy, which uses reflection only as a means, and which aims 
to bridge over that yawning chasm, and bring together again the 
sundered parts ; since otherwise, it would have no need to philoso¬ 
phize. Evidently, then, the proper office of intellectual intuition is 
to discern the primitive identity of Subject and Object, to unite 
man with the universe, and thereby to resolve all into one. 

Thus, as Hamilton declares, Schelling founds philosophy on the 
annihilation of consciousness, and on the identification of the un¬ 
conscious philosopher with God himself. The essence of the 
system is pantheism, — not subjective, like that of Fichte, — but 
objective pantheism, by which all conscious being is swallowed up 
in the Infinite, the unknowing and unconscious God, One and All. 
Schelling spends much argument and ingenuity on the attempt to 
illustrate the process through which the intellect thus emancipates 
itself from the conditions of time and sense, and even from all the 
limitations of its own being, so far, at least, as to catch glimpses of 
that unfathomable abyss in which it is itself engulfed. A knowl¬ 
edge of the Absolute, he says, is a recognition of the essential 
'.dentity and indifference of all things. In it, all contrast and 
opposition is taken away. Thought is identified with existence, 
the ideal with the real, the subjective with the objective, the uni¬ 
versal with the particular, the infinite with the finite, the one with 



346 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the all. The essence of all things is one, and what creates appar¬ 
ent diversity is only the distinction of Form, whereby individuals 
are seemingly distinguished and set off over against each other. 
Abstract these differences of Form, and what remains is the indis¬ 
tinguishable essence. Thus, the artist identifies the ideal with the 
real in his own work, which is a true work of art only so far as it 
perfectly embodies the Idea on canvas or in marble. The forms 
which the geometer contemplates in abstract space represent the 
eternal and immutable relations to each other of what really exists 
only in idea, and to which the visible diagram is but an imperfect 
approximation. Every judgment is an identical equation, and its 
formula, A = A, does not determine the nature, or affirm the ex¬ 
istence, of either member of the equation, but only affirms their 
essential identity, whatever they may be. 

Objective pantheism, as it is conceived by Schelling, may per¬ 
haps be best illustrated by that common but vague abstraction and 
generalization, whereby we designate the whole external universe, 
all the forces operating in it, and all the physical laws which are 
the expression of these forces, by one word, as Nature. Apart 
from any theory upon the subject, and, indeed, in order to avoid 
the necessity of framing or adopting any theory respecting the 
origin and constitution of things, we ordinarily speak of Nature as 
one connected whole, of all the forces which produce its various • 
phenomena as the powers of Nature; and then, carrying the gen¬ 
eralization still further, we consider all these individual causes, or 
modes of operation, and the phenomena dependent upon them, as 
the manifestations of a single force, the one great power which 
operates in Nature, and controls all its forms of being. Nature to 
us is an aggregate of objects and events, the former coexisting in 
space, the latter succeeding each other in time. We consider the 
forms and various attributes of different substances, and all the 
changes to which they are subject, as determined by some cause, 
we know not what, acting from within outwards, which constrains 
all things to be what they are ; and this is what we call Nature. 
Thus, we say that it is the Nature of matter to gravitate, or for 
all its particles to attract each other; of the particles of given sub¬ 
stances, to cohere; of light, to radiate in straight lines from a 
centre ; of heat, to diffuse itself equally ; of plants, to grow; of 
animals, to be sentient; of man, to think. All that we are, and 
all that we behold, are but the various forms of Nature, and mani¬ 
festations of her occult power. 

Now, what is with us merely a loose form of expression, in- 


SCHELLING. 


347 


vented not to simulate knowledge, but to confess our ignorance, is, 
to Schelling, the keynote of philosophy, and the secret of the 
universe. To him, Nature is the Absolute. It is the mysterious, 
inconceivable, and unconscious force or agency, which is the source 
of all things, the origin of all phenomena, of all that manifests 
itself either to sense or consciousness. It is not only their source, 
but their very being. It is at once the spirit and the substance of 
the universe; it is that which makes them what they are, and it is 
all that they are. We cannot know it, we cannot even think it. 
We can approximate to a knowledge of it only by falling back into 
Nature, and becoming identified with it. In such a trance or men¬ 
tal vision, I must become unconscious, and first know myself only 
by knowing that I am not myself, but am only one of the infinite 
manifestations of the Absolute. The universe then exists only in 
idea, and this idea struggles up to consciousness through an infini¬ 
tude of phenomenal forms, first realizing itself in them, and culmi¬ 
nating at last in the mind of man. The successive stages of this 
upward progress are designated by Schelling as potenzes, or grades 
of phenomenal existence, from the brute clod, or lowest form of 
Nature, up to the highest manifestations of life and thought. And 
since all is but the manifestation of one unconscious energy, all 
takes place by one law of development, one law of polar force, 
through which the One uniformly and necessarily becomes the 
Many. This law of development it is the business of science and 
philosophy to trace and demonstrate. The progress of science 
consists in detecting ever fresh indications of the uniformity of 
Nature’s work, and the oneness of her being. 

The reader would be only puzzled and confounded, if he were 
to attempt to penetrate far into the copious details of Schelling’s 
system; since it is evident, from this mere sketch of its ground¬ 
work, that he is obliged to traverse the broad fields of science, 
history, and art, with a long series of sweeping generalizations, 
ingenious speculative views, and bold anticipations of the future 
progress of discovery. The main branches of his philosophic tree, 
moreover, are covered with such a profusion of foliage and fruit, 
that our attention is diverted, in spite of ourselves, from the main 
features of the system, and lost among a multitude of particulars. 
It must be observed, also, in justice to Schelling, that although he 
had a competent knowledge of the various departments of physical 
science as they existed at the beginning of the present century, 
the progress of discovery since that time has given a new aspect 
V> many of the facts and laws which were considered and incor- 


348 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


porated into his system, has thereby taken away much of the evi¬ 
dence on which he relied, and has made his speculations seem 
much more fanciful and unfounded than they appeared to be when 
they were first promulgated. He was thus placed at a disadvan¬ 
tage even during his lifetime, since he published his “Philosophy 
of Nature ” when he was yet a young man; and for this reason, 
if for no other, Hegelianism for a while triumphed over him. 

The first movement of the Absolute towards its manifestation 
to sense and consciousness, according to Schelling, is by its own 
self-diremption, through the law of polar forces, into the two op¬ 
posites, outward Nature and Mind or Spirit. But as both these 
are mere expressions of the unity which lies beneath them, whence 
'they spring, the two must perfectly correspond with each other in 
all their manifestations. Nature must be the visible soul, soul the 
invisible nature. Each exists only as the conflict of two opposing 
forces. Mind is the unity of a limiting and an unlimited force. 
It would fain extend itself to infinity; but it can become conscious 
only by abutting upon some obstacle, by which it is shut in and 
rendered determinate. In like manner, Matter must be conceived, 
not as an inert mass, but as the antagonism of the two opposite 
forces, attraction and repulsion, the former appearing in cohesion 
and gravitation, the latter in impenetrability, or the power by 
which it excludes every thing else from the space occupied by it¬ 
self. But Force is, as it were, what is immaterial in matter; it is 
that which may be compared to mind. Then the two are essen¬ 
tially identical, each being the result of a conflict of forces, which 
are at bottom the same. Nature appears, then, as the counterpart 
of mind, and produced by mind, only that the mind may, through 
its agency, attain to a pure perception of itself, that is, to self- 
consciousness. Hence it appears, notwithstanding the objective 
aspect of Schelling’s pantheism, that his system at bottom is essen¬ 
tially idealistic. The universe exists only in thought; and yet 
thought is itself only a development of universal nature, that is, of 
the Absolute. Mind, he says, continually seeks to externalize 
itself in outward visible forms, and thereby to become finite; but 
then the infinite power within reasserts itself, and it returns vic¬ 
torious from every such effort at objectivation into identity with 
itself as pure Subject. It is by a succession of Potenzes, or dis¬ 
tinct steps, that this process of evolution and involution is contin¬ 
ually carried on. In order to trace these parallel developments of 
matter and mind, Schelling divided philosophy into two parts, and 
wrote a separate treatise upon each, as the “ Philosophy of Na¬ 
ture,” and “ Transcendental Idealism,” or the Philosophy of Spirit. 


SCHELLING. 


349 


The Absolute is the identity of thought and being, of the ideal 
and the real, of the subjective and the objective. We take the 
Realist at his word ; we adopt his theory. What he stoutly main¬ 
tains is, that the actual material thing, — a lump of iron, for in¬ 
stance, or a book, — is precisely what we perceive and think it to 
be. Just so, we answer ; the perception and thought perfectly 
correspond to the real object. There is not the difference of a 
hair’s breadth between them. Esse = percipi. Thought and 
Being are One. I myself am one thinking being; and therefore, 
all that I think, — the outer universe of men and things, external 
Nature, — is one; for you have just asserted that this Nature per¬ 
fectly corresponds to my thought. To be still more exact, at any 
one moment, I myself am not precisely one thinking being, but I 
am one thought; since, for that one moment, one thought ex¬ 
presses my whole existence, and is my entire being ; and if that 
one thought represents the universe, then the universe is that 
thought, and does not differ from it by the diameter of a hair. 
The Absolute is the middle point of the magnet, the centre where 
there ceases to be any difference between the two opposite poles, 
the Ideal or Subjective at one end, and the Real or Objective at 
the other. The formula for the Absolute, then, is A = A, north 
pole indifferent and indistinguishable from south pole, the Ideal 
identical with the Real. The difference between these opposites 
emerges only in the world of phenomena, of that which only ap¬ 
pears, not that which really is. And this difference is only one of 
quantity, not of quality; taken at any one point on the bar of iron, 
other than the centre, magnetism is still one, only there is a pre¬ 
dominance either of north or south polarity. Just so, equilibrium of 
quantity between the Real and the Ideal exists only at the centre 
of indifference ; and at every stage of removal from the Absolute, 
difference between individual things appears as a mere prepond¬ 
erance of either force, but by no means as the entire absence of 
one of them. Illustrations may easily be found of this tendency 
of mere quantity to pass over into an apparent difference of qual¬ 
ity. Thus, merely by diminishing the quantity of heat, water 
changes its quality from a liquid to a solid state, and becomes ice. 
If we designate the Ideal or Subjective pole by A, and the Real 
or Objective pole by B, then the formula for the finite, that is, 
for the union of a conscious Subject with an Object different from 
itself, is A = B. According as A or B is preponderant, it ap¬ 
pears as the positive, and its contrary as the negative, pole; nat¬ 
urally so, as the difference is only quantitative. Thus, for exam- 


350 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


pie, in a particular stone, the Objective preponderates, and the 
formula becomes A“=B + . On the other hand, in the concept, or 
abstract general idea of stone as a whole class of objects, the Sub¬ 
jective or Ideal pole predominates, and the formula is, A + = B~. 
Of course, -f- and — are here used not in their strict algebraic 
sense, but only as symbols for more or less. 

Schelling distinguishes three Potenzes, as he calls them, or de¬ 
grees of preponderance, on both the Real and the Ideal side. 
Observe that each is only relatively Real and relatively Ideal; 
and this is precisely what is meant by saying that the phenomenal 
difference between them is only quantitative; there is no real dif¬ 
ference of quality. The absolutely Real is identical with the ab¬ 
solutely Ideal in the centre of indifference, the Absolute, where all is 
one and one is all. The relatively Real, or Objective phenomenal 
being, appears as Gravity, Inertia, Matter, designated as B +1 ; next, 
as Light, Movement, Force, which are B +2 ; lastly, as Life, Organ¬ 
ism, Animal, B +3 . It is easy to point out the differences between 
the various forms and forces of external nature, which Schelling 
had in view, when he arranged them as successive steps or Potenzes 
whereby the Real returns towards the Ideal. Thus, the action of 
Gravity is centripetal, tending to draw all into one ; but that of 
Light is centrifugal, tending to infinite dispersion. Again, Inertia 
may be conceived as the impediment, and Movement as its oppo¬ 
site, or the impediment overcome. Matter is passive, and Force 
is that through which this passivity is vanquished. What follows 
is much more fanciful, was elaborated by Schelling at a later day, 
and appears to lack evidence and to be deficient in precision of 
thought. 

The relatively Ideal, or Subjective Being, he says, appears as 
Truth, Science, abstract general Idea, these being the first Potenz, 
A +1 . Next, Goodness, Religion, Feeling, A +2 ; and lastly, Beauty, 
Art, the Product of free Activity, A +3 . The entire develop¬ 
ment of the Real Potenzes gives us the external universe, standing 
under its laws of physical necessity. The crown and complement 
of this world of realities is Man, regarded as the microcosm or rep¬ 
resentative of the universe. The complete development of the 
Ideal Potenzes gives us the history of the free activity of the hu¬ 
man race. The crown and complement of history is the ideal 
State. Reason is the knowledge of the identity of the two sides 
m the Absolute, or God ; and the crown and complement of the 
reason which has risen to a full cognition of itself, is Philosophy. 

In every form, one of the two factors or constituents of the 


SCHELLMG. 


351 


Absolute, as I have said, is predominant; but the other is never 
entirely wanting. In the forms of Nature, there is an excess of 
Reality or Matter; but from the ideal factor, this Matter receives 
Form, Life, and Soul. On the other hand, the creations of the 
human mind in Science, Art, and Religion, although especially rep¬ 
resenting the Ideal, always proceed from, and go back to, the 
Real. The Idea incorporates itself in outward visible forms. 
Science appeals to the senses in diagrams, apparatus, and experi¬ 
ments ; in the objects of natural history, classified according to its 
ideas in herbaria and museums ; in visible symbols even of ab¬ 
stract general ideas. Art creates imaginative ideal forms, but em¬ 
bodies them in paintings, statuary, and architecture. Even relig¬ 
ion must have its cultus, its rites, its symbols, its temples, its music, 
and its priesthood. As Nature manifests a constant bias and 
pressure towards the Ideal, so, on the other hand, Spirit seeks for 
its universal and formless conceptions a definite shape and a solid 
foundation. 

The magnet is not the only form in which the law of polarity 
shows itself in Nature ; rather this law is revealed throughout all 
parts of the universe, so that Nature is, so to speak, one great 
magnet. Another phenomenal form of the polarizing power in 
Nature is electricity, having its positive and negative sides, which, 
on coming together, neutralize each other. The same law is found 
by the physicist again, we are told, in the phenomena of light; 
and by the chemist, in the compounds of oxygen with nitrogen. 
Even in the world of organic forms, this mutual play of contrary 
forces is recognized. The plant and the animal are the represen¬ 
tatives of two opposite directions of the organizing force or ten¬ 
dency in Nature. The plant consumes carbonic acid and gives out 
oxygen; the animal inspires oxygen and gives out carbonic acid. 
Throughout the vegetable and animal kingdoms, also, this law of 
polarity shows itself in the distinction of sex. In the world of 
spiritual life, also, the same polar opposition appears again in 
higher forms, as in the contrast of knowing and doing, of religion 
and the state. But the most striking illustration of it is in that 
great law of perception and thought, to which we have so fre¬ 
quently referred, that each cognition comes to us only by discrimi¬ 
nation or difference, that is, by contrast. We know what any 
thing is, only by distinguishing it from what it is not. Omnis de- 
terminatio est negatio. 

Philosophy contemplates this universal law of polarization under 
the form of triplicity, as Unity which is the Thesis, Duplicity or 


352 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Plurality which is the Antithesis, and the Identity or Indifference 
of these two, i. e ., Many regarded as One, which is the Synthesis. 
What first exists is simple Unity identical with itself. This un¬ 
folds itself, or is differentiated into another, or many others, as 
the opposite of itself; and then these two opposites are merged 
into a higher Unity, more complete and determinate than the 
former one. Only the Absolute, the original All in One and One 
in All, that is, God, is a full expression of this Triplicity or Total¬ 
ity. But every particular substance, as we have seen, and even 
every thought, is a relative identity of the Real and the Ideal. 
The application of this system to the theological doctrine of the 
Trinity is almost too obvious to merit notice. 

The simplest form under which the Absolute appears in Nature 
is* Matter, regarded merely as extended and impenetrable Substance. 
Here the Real element largely preponderates. And yet, Matter is 
not a lifeless inert mass, purely external; rather is it a union, a 
relative totality, of the external, which is only the surface of Mat¬ 
ter, and of the internal, which is Force, as manifested in Impene¬ 
trability, Gravity, Cohesion, etc. All the attributes of Matter 
which are cognizable by sense belong exclusively to its surface; 
therefore, says Schelling, Matter has no inside, no interior; cut 
it up into as small portions as we please, we never come in con¬ 
tact with anything but its surface. What we conceive as its inte¬ 
rior is the Ideal element, is pure Force; or rather, is the synthesis 
of two opposite Forces, attraction and repulsion, the former ap¬ 
pearing as gravity, or weight, and cohesion, the latter as impene¬ 
trability, the force which excludes all other Matter from the space 
occupied by itself. But as the Real or objective factor predomi¬ 
nates in it, it is designated as A - = B + ; and as the earliest form 
of the relative identity of the two factors, it is A and B in the first 
Potenz. 

Into this comparatively dead and inert mass come life, move¬ 
ment, and form, through Light, which is the second Potenz or 
stage, A 2 . The Ideal factor or element strives to overcome the 
Real; the principle of activity or force, which is the male element 
of nature, overpowers the principle of rest, or inertia, which is the 
feminine. Here we cannot help remarking of Schelling’s doctrine, 
that the distinction of sex exemplifies the law of polarization, that 
it seems more fanciful than scientific. Under the influence of 
Light, material particles leave the places assigned to them by 
merely mechanical laws, and unite and are developed into various 
forms under dynamic laws. The nisus formations, the formative 


SCHELLING. 


353 


impulse, in Nature, begins to show itself, and to advance from the 
lower to higher forms, Time being the schema of this progressive 
development. The earliest shape or form which Matter assumes, 
when it leaves the state of mere inert and shapejess aggregation 
into which it is brought by gravity, is that of the straight line. 
The Force which thus arranges them in lines is the force of Co¬ 
hesion, and the universal schema or expression of this force is 
magnetism. All outward Nature is one great magnet; and every 
particular substance, also, is a magnet. 

Again, from the effort of different bodies to increase their own 
cohesion, and to diminish the cohesion of other bodies in contact 
with them, electricity is developed. The body which suffers a 
relative diminution of its cohesive force is said to be positively, 
that in which the cohesion is relatively increased is negatively, 
electrified. Still further; even the union of Magnetism and Elec¬ 
tricity does not represent the totality of the dynamic process. 
This is first effected by Chemical action, which takes place through 
the two former agents, and appears in its most complete form as 
Galvanism. Therefore, Magnetism, Electricity, and Galvanism 
are the three stages of the Dynamic process. The first of these is 
relative identity or the Thesis, the second is relative duplicity or 
plurality, the Antithesis, and Galvanism is relative totality, or the 
Synthesis. 

The first two powers of Nature, Gravity and Light, together 
with the dynamic process which is conditioned by them, elevate 
themselves into a third Potenz, A 3 , Organic Life. Here the ex¬ 
ternal material form is a compact body of determinate shape, con¬ 
taining in itself a persistent principle of movement, a nisus forma- 
tivus or continuous tendency to development, so that its existence 
belongs to Time as well as to Space. The lower forms of nature’s 
products have a permanent existence, or endure unchanged; but 
the organic life of the individual has a beginning and an end, 
birth and death; though the species to which this individual be¬ 
longs is perpetually reproduced, so that the idea or plan is per¬ 
petuated. 

The living organism develops itself under three distinct forms, 
as Vegetable, Animal, and Human Life, each haviug its distinctive 
and independent principle of development. In plants, this is the 
law of reproduction; in animals that of irritability; while sensi¬ 
bility belongs to man alone. These exist in inverse ratio to each 
other ; that is, as irritability becomes stronger, the mere reproduc¬ 
tive faculty is diminished; and irritability again is lessened, as 
23 


854 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


sensibility gains the upper hand. Another opposition manifests 
itself within this sphere, as the respective tendencies to oxidation 
and deoxidation. Vegetable life is perpetually deoxidizing the 
compounds of carbon, nitrogen, etc., while the life-process of the 
animal consists in absorbing oxygen by respiration, and thus oxi¬ 
dizing them again. Growth and continuance of the species are, 
both of them, phenomenal manifestation of one and the same ten¬ 
dency, or physical law, that the organization persistently strives to 
individualize itself in successive forms embodying the same idea, 
or built on the same plan. But this very law of individualization 
is an expression of polarity, inasmuch as, by a process of self-di- 
remption, one becomes two, the parent duplicating itself; and 
this duplicity or plurality is again resolved by a higher synthesis, 
the contemporaneous and successive individuals of any one species 
being properly regarded as continuous products, or manifestations of 
one organism Or organizing process. Sometimes, as in the case of 
the corals, and even of the bees, they are hardly individuals, but 
form a sort of republic, having a federative life. The drone, the 
worker, and the queen-bee are the three limbs of one organism. 
Thus the law of triplicity or polarity reigns throughout external 
Nature. 

We need not casry this sketch any further, and I omit a multi¬ 
tude of ingenious and striking details. A mere glance at the Ideal 
or Subjective phasis of the theory must suffice. Man, the crown 
and complement of the physical side of nature, is a finite being, 
but endowed with a ceaseless impulse and striving towards the In¬ 
finite and the Absolute, that is, towards a union with God. The 
happiness and the morality of man consist in the progressive 
development of his ideas, in the complete harmony of his actions, 
and in the gratification of the impulse which his reason prompts 
towards organic creative formations; in a word, they consist in 
the cognition and imitation of the eternal infinite essence of 
the Absolute. Two ways lead man towards this object, Science 
and Action. Science is the Ideal form of reason; Action is its 
Real or objective manifestation ; but Science and Action have 
one and the same end in view, namely, the representation or real¬ 
ization of reason’s ideas. While we apprehend through Science 
the organic laws of that great process of development which we 
call Nature or the World, we behold immediately the living spirit 
of God ; for the World is nothing else than God’s revelation of 
himself under finite forms. But just so we approximate to the 
divine essence by Action, when we, by our deeds, carry out into 


SCHELLING. 


355 


reality the universal law of development and harmony ; when we, 
with all our powers, strive to raise humanity to perfectness and 
completion. 

Science and Action, Truth and Goodness, cease to be opposites 
and are fused together in Art, which, as the creator of the beauti¬ 
ful, is the synthesis of the two. Art is the complete and perfect 
form under which the Infinite is represented to our reason. The 
images which it creates are something external and corporeal; but 
it makes these images live, through infusing into them the breath 
of the divine Idea. In these artistic creations, the Absolute speaks 
to us immediately and unveiled, and shines around us with its God¬ 
like splendor. What Science seeks in vain to accomplish through 
the embodied operations of thought, what morality holds out as a 
lofty but remote Ideal, wherewith to quicken and rouse our Will, 
lhat the Artist, through a single creative act of his genius, places 
directly before us in a living form. Hence, Science leading to 
Truth, Morality guiding to Religion and right action, and Art 
creative of Beauty, are the three potenzes which make up the to¬ 
tality of the Ideal side of Nature. 

And yet Art is not, in every respect, an adequate expression of 
the Absolute. This cannot be completely revealed in any indi¬ 
vidual thing, or any single representation of one Idea. It can 
pour forth the inexhaustible fulness of its essence only in a mul¬ 
titude of individuals, who, through harmonious organic laws, are 
fused together into that living unity which we call a State. 
This is the external or objective organism, which first brings 
Freedom into harmony with compulsory Law, as well in the ag¬ 
gregate life of the community, as in the single acts of the individ¬ 
ual citizen, and which, after the divine prototype, is the artistic 
forging together into one body, Ineinsbildung , of morality and re¬ 
ligion, art and science. The State is the realization of the idea 
of Right. 

Again, as a merely external and objective manifestation of the 
Absolute, the State must have as its complement an Ideal factor; 
and this is Religion, or the Church. Religion is the intuition of 
God in his infinite revelation and development of himself. This 
revelation of God finds its highest expression in History, that grand 
manifestation, on the theatre of the universe? of the process of de¬ 
velopment of human freedom and civilization. The succession of 
events which the historian contemplates is not a blind mechanism 
of physical causes and effects, under the despotic rule of necessity; 
neither is it a picture of humanity driven forward by the fierce 


356 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


impetuosity of blind passions and appetites, without any determi¬ 
nate aim or law of action. Philosophy perceives that human life 
is neither impelled by thoughtless caprice nor shaped by the stern 
necessities of physical law; but in the steady development of the 
human race, it perceives the agency of divine Providence, the work 
of God himself. 

Thus, History comes back to Religion, to the immediate revela¬ 
tion of God to man and the return of man to God. As Nature, 
the All of corporeal things, finds its highest expression in Man, so 
Man rises by a continuous development in Science and Art, Mo¬ 
rality and Religion, to unity with God, the absolute identity of all 
things. The intellectual intuition of this unity with the Absolute 
is Philosophy, which, as the universal essence of reason, unites in 
itself all the other expressions of spiritual life, and comprehends 
them in their absolute identity. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Hegel. I. — All resolved into One. 

George William Frederic Hegel, the founder of the third 
philosophy of the Absolute based upon the principles of Kantian 
metaphysics, was born at Stuttgard in 1770, and died of the 
cholera at Berlin in 1831. His life was an uneventful one, de¬ 
voted with indefatigable industry to the development of his theo¬ 
ries, the usual round of occupations for an academic man in 
Germany affording him a livelihood, at first narrow and poverty- 
stricken, and only becoming reputable and independent when he 
was well advanced in years. In 1818, he succeeded Fichte as 
professor of philosophy in the University of Berlin, the highest 
post of honor and emolument then open to a metaphysician in all 
Europe. Previously, as schoolmaster, editor, author, privat-docent , 
and ordinary professor in one of the lesser German universities, 
he had earned his bread and acquired some reputation; but noth¬ 
ing more. After his removal to Berlin, his fame blazed forth like 
a meteor, and his philosophy became the leading topic of the day, 
not merely-in academic circles and schools of theology, but in 
literature, politics, and art. Hegelianism was debated not only in 
the Universities, its proper home, but in the council chamber, in 
thf' halls of legislation, in the popular journals, and even in the 
marts of commerce. We are told, that the first question which 
was asked respecting any person who appeared likely to obtain 
distinction and power in any career whatsoever was, Is he, or is he 
not, a Hegelian ? Parties were formed, and vehement discussions 
ensued between them, in respect to the proper interpretation of 
Hegel’s doctrines, and the right application of them in theology, 
politics, legislation, and history. These parties long survived the 
death of “ the Master,” as he was called by his admiring disciples 
of whichever faction ; and it is only within a few years that we 
have ceased to hear much about Young Hegelians and Old. Hegel¬ 
ians, Hegelians of the Centre, the right Centre, the Left, and the 
extreme Left; though many of the eminent men are still living and 


358 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


active who were long familiarly known as constituting these dis¬ 
tinct schools. 

The popularity and influence of Hegel’s speculations appear the 
more remarkable, as they are more refined and subtle, and are 
clothed in phraseology more repulsive and difficult to be under¬ 
stood, than any philosophical doctrine that has been broached since 
the days of Heraclitus the Obscure. Even one who has fully 
mastered the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” and the Wissenschafts- 
lehre, may still shrink from grappling with the “ Phenomenology of 
the Spirit ” and the “ Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.” 
The story is told of Hegel, that he remarked despondently, when 
on his death-bed, “ I shall leave behind me in all Europe but one 
man who understands my philosophy; and he don’t.” Dr. Stir¬ 
ling, an enthusiastic Scotch disciple, who has spent years in Ger¬ 
many in intense study of the system, has published, in two bulky 
octavos, what he calls the “ Secret of Hegel.” But it is a Secret ” 
very imperfectly divulged ; since it touches, after all, only on a 
corner of the subject, and the writer himself sees fit to discourse in 
that fantastic, jerky, and discursive style, full of queer conceits and 
labored intensities of expression, which Thomas Carlyle once made 
popular, though it is sure to prove a Nessus-shirt to any one who 
has not Carlyle’s genius. 

After all, Hegel is not a positively bad writer, like Kant. He 
has a large command of the vast resources of the German lan¬ 
guage, aud often expresses himself with much force, terseness, and 
point, and occasionally with tingling wit and sarcasm. But he is 
harsh, crabbed, and obscure, through the constant and excessive 
use, or rather abuse, of the most repulsive terminology, the most 
uncouth jargon of technical terms, that the perverse ingenuity of 
man ever invented. In the pedantic employment of this barbarous 
dialect, he out-herods Herod; in comparison with his, even Kant’s 
technical phraseology appears almost pure and classical. In re¬ 
spect to this profusion of abstruse technicalities, a mastery of which 
is the shibboleth of the sect, Menzel, himself a German, says, “ Let 
a person read a philosophical work of Hegel, and ask himself if 
there ever was a nation in the world, who would acknowledge such 
a language as its own.” And there is this further evil attendant 
upon the use of such a pedantic dialect, that after one has, by dint 
of hard work, become conversant with it, his own thought involun¬ 
tarily assumes this garb, and he fancies that he has discerned new 
truths, or new confutations of old errors, when in fact he has been 
occupied only in translating what was familiarly known into new 


HEGEL. I.—ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


359 


forms of expression. He mistakes the acquisition of another lan¬ 
guage for the discovery of another science. In the writings of 
Dr. Stirling and Mr. Wallace, who are far the ablest English dis¬ 
ciples and expositors of Hegelianism, I think one may sometimes 
detect this unintentional substitution of words for thoughts. On its 
native ground, the use of this metaphysical jargon seems to be 
rapidly dying out. Since the death of Hegel, a new generation 
have arisen, who refuse to undertake the drudgery of mastering its 
details, and who contemptuously reject the system because it is 
unintelligible. 

Another obstacle in the way of understanding Hegel arises from 
the encyclopaedic vastness of his aims ; in the resolute and thorough¬ 
going manner, in which he turns topsy-turvy all the sciences, all 
departments of human life, thought, and action, in order to enfold 
them in the Titanic arms of his system, and compel them to dance 
at his bidding. The true or absolute philosophy, he says, must 
contain in itself, not only the principles of all antecedent philo¬ 
sophical systems, but all the doctrines of morality, religion, and 
politics, and all the ideas which have ever contributed to unfold 
the destiny, and promote the progress and culture, of the human 
race. It must explicate at once the philosophy of history and the 
history of philosophy, tracing each to its source in the development 
of one grand Idea, one fundamental principle of thought, which 
unites and reconciles all oppositions and contrasts, and leaves 
nothing unexplained in the nature and life of man, whether as an 
individual or a race. Philosophy, he says still more audaciously, 
“ is the representation of God as he was in his eternal essence, 
before the creation of the world or of any finite being ; ” and be¬ 
ginning at this point, the office of philosophy is to repeat in 
thought the act of creation, showing how the universe of all that 
is, and all that ever has been, is evolved by successive steps out of 
nothin", through what he calls “ Immanent Dialectic,” or the neces- 
sary process of logic which is inherent in pure thought. 

Of course, the system which is to accomplish this grand result 
must be based, in the first place, upon absolute Idealism ; for if 
the universe exists only in thought, it will be comparatively easy 
to trace the process through which it is constructed out of pure 
thought; and secondly, it must be pantheistic in character; for 
only so far as One is identified with All, can All be developed out 
of One; and only so far as man’s thought is identical with God’s 
thought, can the act of creation be repeated or followed by the 
human mind. The system starts with the assumption, that Thought 


360 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


and Being are identical. The universe exists for me, or for any 
one, only so far as we comprehend it; that is, so far as it is a 
notion or concept ( Begrijf ), an abstract general idea, in my mind, 
or in some other mind. And what is true of the whole, is true 
also of each of its parts. Any thing whatever, any determinate 
being, exists only in the general Idea, the abstract Concept, which 
the mind forms of the class of objects to which this thing belongs ; 
since this abstract notion embraces all the necessary and essential 
attributes of the objects thus ranked together, those which are pe¬ 
culiar to any individual member of the class being unessential, 
fleeting, and accidental. For instance: if I know or think John 
aud William, not as individuals through personal acquaintance 
with them, but simply as men, my notion of them will include all 
the proper attributes of humanity as such; namely, a living body, 
a biped and two-handed vertebrate mammal, having a brain and 
an intelligence, and a capacity both for laughter and tears. Per¬ 
sonal knowledge of them separately could add only the unimpor¬ 
tant features of red or black hair, fair or olive complexion, tall or 
short, amiable or unamiable, and the like. Now, if individuals ex¬ 
ist only in thought, it is evident that these their accidental qualities 
may be dropped out of view altogether, and the general abstract 
conception of the class to which they belong is all, as a phenome¬ 
non of consciousness, the genesis of which needs to be explained. 
To explain the origin, then, of all ranks of being and orders of 
phenomena, we have only to point out some necessary process of 
evolution or self-development of pure thought, through which, be¬ 
ginning with what is most vague, comprehensive, and indetermi¬ 
nate, — pure being, or existence as such, for instance,— we may 
trace the successive steps — “ Moments of the Process,” Hegel 
calls them — whereby we create the universe in thought, and peo¬ 
ple it with the groups of ideal beings and things, the individual 
phantasms, which are present to the empirical consciousness. 
Hegelianism, briefly expressed, says Schopenhauer, teaches us that 
the world is a crystallized syllogism. 

It is already obvious that, in respect to the province and the 
functions of the Science of Logic, Hegel maintains a theory which 
differs widely from the doctrine, now generally accepted, which is 
clearly set forth and defended by Kant. We have learned, if not 
from Aristotle, at least from the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” that 
Logic is concerned solely with the Form of Thought, and not at 
all with its Matter, or what we are thinking about. It is the sci¬ 
ence of thinking in the abstract, irrespective of the objects, 


HEGEL. I. — ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


361 


whether ideal or real, to which our thoughts may be directed. 
Hence, the science is not an organon, or a means of increasing our 
knowledge ; and it furnishes only a negative test of the validity or 
correctness of the knowledge already in our possession. If the 
reasoning be incorrect in Form, the conclusion is invalid ; but 
even if correct in form, the conclusion may be wrong, because de¬ 
rived from wrong premises ; and Logic as such has no concern 
with the truth or falsity of the premises. That consideration be¬ 
longs to the Matter of Thought. But as understood by Hegel, 
Logic is a material or metaphysical science, its great function being 
the evolution of truth, and in fact the creation of the universe, 
through the generative power of the mere process of thinking. 
According to his theory, there is no receptivity of mind, but every 
thing is evolved by the spontaneity of pure thought. Beginning 
with the loftiest of all abstractions, with pure and universal Being, 
which, because absolutely indeterminate or without attributes, is 
not distinguishable from Non-being, the mere process of thinking 
develops this shadow of a shade into the world of concrete realities 
which appear to be manifested to sense. 

I can hardly suppose that this is intelligible as yet; but it is 
to be hoped that it will become clearer as we go on. A cardi¬ 
nal principle of Hegel’s system is thus enunciated by him : that 
whatever is Real is Rational, and whatever is Rational is Real. 
Explicate this comprehensive maxim, and it will be found to mean, 
that the law of thought is also the law of things; that whatever 
I necessarily think, must present itself objectively to my conscious¬ 
ness, as at least an empirical reality ; that the mind, or rather the 
universal consciousness,— for we must use pantheistic phrases now, 
all individual minds being reduced to one, the typical one corre¬ 
sponding to the Concept or general notion of its class, and this one 
being identified with the miud of God, — that this universal con¬ 
sciousness, I say, has a natural and necessary order of development 
or self-evolution, or thinks according to imperative laws, only the 
products of such thinking being what we call “ rational; ” and that 
all phenomenal reality, all that is or ever has been, must be capa¬ 
ble of reduction to these categories of thought, or of explanation 
as inevitable Moments of the one all-comprehensive Process, 
through which the particular is educed from the universal, the All 
from the One. 

But here a difficulty presents itself, in the shape of a very in¬ 
convenient test of the validity of the whole system. If it be not 
only well founded in its general conception, or as a whole, but 


362 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


also, as “ the Master ” and his disciples maintain, if it has been 
so far successfully worked out in all its parts, as to afford an 
adequate and rational explanation of all past and present phe¬ 
nomena, — if all that is now, or ever has been, present to con¬ 
sciousness conforms to this exposition of its nature and origin, — 
then Hegelianism should be capable of answering all demands that 
may be made upon it, and of revealing the secrets of th q future, 
as well as unriddling all the enigmas of our present and past ex¬ 
istence. I call this an inconvenient test, since it is an awkward 
trial for any one to be compelled to prophesy, under penalty of 
being discredited altogether, if the events do not conform to the 
prediction. Accordingly, we detect some shuffling among the 
Hegelians upon this point. So far, indeed, as the History of Phi¬ 
losophy is concerned, all is plain ; we have only to regard Hegel¬ 
ianism as a finality, the culmination of the speculative spirit, and 
therefore as the Absolute Philosophy, beyond which there is no 
progress, and, conseqently, no future systems whose rise is to be 
predicted. But in respect to the Philosophy of History, the case 
is very different; for here indefinite progress, or at any rate, un¬ 
ceasing change, whether for the better or the worse, must be an¬ 
ticipated ; and to determine the laws, or write out a -priori the 
history, of what is to be man’s future experience upon earth, is 
more than the most daring speculatist will venture to attempt. 
Yet consistency requires him who dogmatically asserts that all 
which has been is but the necessary evolution of the principles set 
forth in his theory, to be equally positive and unerring in the ap¬ 
plication of the same principles to the record of the future. 

My present purpose, however, is not to criticise, but to expound 
Hegelianism. I have commented upon this single point, merely in 
order to call attention for a moment to that endless diversity of 
human affairs, that ever changing lot of man upon earth, which 
bears so strong testimony to the perfect freedom of the human will, 
in spite of the efforts made by speculative fatalists to regard all 
events as necessarily determined by the universal laws which they 
have evolved either from a past experience, or from the depths of 
their own consciousness. 

One source of the great popularity of Hegelianism, especially 
with politicians and theologians, may be found in its conciliatory 
character. It has a strong tendency to bridge over the separation 
of parties and differences of creeds, and to effect compromises be¬ 
tween jarring opinions. It bears a catholic aspect, and seems to 
open its arms in order to gather into one fold the inmates of many 


HEGEL. I. — ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


363 


camps, who had hitherto waged fierce war upon each other. The 
law of trichotomy, which is the basis of the Hegelian logic, enables 
us to take up any two contradictory ideas, and melt them into one 
synthetic notion, which includes them both. Hence, a consistent 
and expert Hegelian may repeat any theological creed, join any 
political party, or defend any philosophical system, without prejudice 
to the opinions which he formerly avowed. At one time, Hegel 
himself was vehemently accused of abandoning his principles as a 
Liberal and a Reformer, and joining heart and hand with the Con¬ 
servatives in Church and State, who, in return, freely dispensed 
official patronage to him and his disciples. Even Schwegler, who 
was to a great extent his admirer and disciple, asserts that Hegel, 
through his connection with the government and the bureaucracy 
of Prussia, not only acquired political influence for himself, but the 
credit for his system of being a state-philosophy, his tenets having 
such official sanction as is usually given to a determinate theologi¬ 
cal creed by a union of Church and State ; and he adds, that this 
artificial superiority over other systems did not always promote the 
internal freedom of his philosophy, or increase its moral worth. 

The accusation was unjust, so far as it imputed to Hegel a dis¬ 
honest motive; for the essence of his philosophy consists, not only 
in finding everywhere unity under contradiction and identity under 
difference, but in regarding error and heresy merely as partial ap¬ 
prehensions of the truth. As all events, all opinions, and all sys¬ 
tems are but Moments of the great Process, or stages of develop¬ 
ment of the one Absolute Idea, they bear their own justification 
along with them. Each is the necessary result of that which pre¬ 
ceded it, and of its own environment of circumstances; each is at 
least an approximation to the truth, a step towards the realization 
of what is rational, an indispensable link of the chain which binds 
all into one. Hence, the system is one admirably adapted for ef¬ 
fecting a junction of parties, and burying old differences out of 
sight. On the other hand, the same peculiarity gives it an ambig¬ 
uous or Protean aspect, and makes its doctrines uncertain of inter¬ 
pretation, so that the former oppositions and contrasts may flame 
out again at any moment. The conciliation of hostile principles 
and interests, which is based only upon a metaphysical theory, and 
that one of indistinct speech and doubtful import, is not likely to 
be of long continuance. Hence the dissensions, to which I have 
already alluded, as breaking out in the school immediately after 
the death of its founder, and which separated it into parties that 
soon destroyed each other by mutual attrition. The philosophy of 


364 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Hegel had brilliant success for a time, but its career was short; at 
present, it is as effete as Scholasticism. After enjoying an unprece¬ 
dented triumph, after coloring every form of German speculation 
in philosophy and theology for nearly half a century, a reaction has 
sprung up against it on its own ground, and appears to be now 
rapidly hurrying it into oblivion. 

The two most important works of Hegel, upon which all the 
others are founded, are the “ Phenomenology of the Spirit,” first 
published in 1807, and the “ Science of Logic,” which appeared six 
or seven years afterwards. These two, in fact, are complements 
of each other, the former aiming to demonstrate the principles of 
his system by the analytic method, resolving the complex phenom¬ 
ena of consciousness into their elements, and thus reaching at last 
the Absolute Idea, whence they are all successively developed ; and 
the Logic beginning, where the Phenomenology leaves off, with 
pure or absolute thought, and thus, through synthesis, tracing up¬ 
wards its self-evolution, by a continuous application of its Imma¬ 
nent Dialectic, and by what appears as successive acts of creation, 
into the concrete universe as now manifested to the senses aud the 
understanding. The Phenomenology resolves the All into One, 
the Logic develops One into the All. The Absolute Idea, which 
is reached only as the termination of the analytic process, is that 
which forms the beginning, the point of departure, iu the synthetic 
evolution of the system. As I have said, the essence of ideal pan¬ 
theism consists in regarding all determinate being, all individual 
forms of concrete existence, as mere phenomenal manifestations of 
the universal and the absolute. The Phenomenology attempts, by 
an effort of pure reason, to demonstrate the unreality or purely 
subjective and spectral character, of all that now appears, by fol¬ 
lowing back the history of an individual consciousness through the 
unconscious or unremembered steps, by which it seemed to awake 
from nothingness into life, and then proceeded to construct in 
thought the apparent universe with which it is now surrounded. 
We begin, then, with this, the analytic, portion of the system. 

The perceptions of sense have to do exclusively with the Single 
and the Immediate; that is, at any one moment, with some one 
form of individual and perfectly determinate existence. Any 
thing which is immediately cognized by sense, for instance, a piece 
of paper, a pen, or a book, is presented to us immediately as this 
thing, existing now and here. Every “ this ” (hoc, hcecceitas ), 
whether past, present, or future, must have its own one time and 
place; it was, is, or will be now and here. “ This ” is the es- 


HEGEL. I. — ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


365 


sence of an individual phenomenon of immediate consciousness; 
“ now ” and “ here ” are its only possible forms. But in truth, 
neither of these is immediately known, and the individuality which 
they seem to manifest is a mere illusion, is only the tjniversal in 
disguise. To the question, What is “ Now ? ” the answer, we will 
suppose, is, “ now , it is day ; ” and we will write down this answer, 
as an intuition of sense, and therefore a truth immediately known, 
or certain. But we have only to wait till sundown, and the truth 
thus written down becomes a lie; for, now it is night. Evidently, 
to the intuitions of sense, each and every moment of time was, is, 
or will be Now. Thus, far from being individual, “ Now ” is a 
universal designation of time. And it is just so in regard to both 
the others. To the question, What is 44 Here ? ” I answer, “ Here 
is a tree.” But I have only to turn round, and this answer too 
becomes a lie, for lo ! “ Here is a house.” “ Here,” then, though 
apprehended by sense as singular or individual, is really a univer¬ 
sal designation for any object whatsoever. In like manner, this 
bit of paper, instead of being the designation of only one object, 
immediately known as such, is really a universal name for each and 
every bit of paper in the universe; since each of them may become, 
to any person now taking cognizance of it through his senses, 
“ this ” bit of paper. 

I borrow, from Mr. Wallace’s translation, Hegel’s own state¬ 
ment of another instance. 44 Similarly, when I say ‘ I,’ I mean my 
single Self to the exclusion of all others ; but what I say , namely, 

* I,’ is just every 4 I,’ which in like manner excludes all others 
from itself. ‘ I ’ is the absolute universal; and community or as¬ 
sociation is one of the forms, though an external form, of univer¬ 
sality. All other men have it in common with me to be ‘I’; just 
as it is common to all my sensations and conceptions to be mine. 
But ‘ I ’ in the abstract, as such, is the mere act of concentration 
or reference to Self, in which we make abstraction from all con¬ 
ception and feeling, from every state of mind and peculiarity of 
nature, talent, and experience. To this extent, 4 1 ’ means the 
existence of a wholly abstract universality, a principle of abstract 
freedom. Thought , viewed as a Subject, is expressed by the word 
4 1 *; and since I am at the same time in all my sensations, con¬ 
ceptions, and states of consciousness, thought is everywhere pres¬ 
ent, and is a category that runs through all these modifications.” 

Moreover, the single or determinate is necessarily finite, and 
therefore limited, or bounded, being. But where its limit or bound¬ 
ary comes, its being ceases, and something else, 44 the other ” of it- 


366 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


self,— open space, for instance, — begins; and this is the negation, 
or non-being, of what we started with, namely, the individual and 
concrete. Hence, every single being, because determinate, leads 
directly to that which is “ the other ” or negation of itself; it is 
what it is, only because it is not something else. Omnis determi- 
natio est negatio ; it is hard, for instance, because it is not soft; it 
is substance, because it is not attribute; or attribute, because not 
substance. Therefore, single or individual being, because always 
leading up to, and mingled with, its “ other ” or contradictory, that 
is, non-being or nothing, cannot be true and pure Being, which must 
always be itself and nothing else. But this true and pure Being 
must be the not-single , not-individual; that is, it must be the Uni¬ 
versal. We approach this true Being just so far as we leave be¬ 
hind us the single, the finite, and the determinate, and therefore rise 
higher in the scale of generality, and approximate to the All, the 
Universal, the Indeterminate. The Universal is the Concept, the 
general Idea, of the class or whole to which the individuals belong. 
Thus, individual men and animals quickly pass away, die, and are 
resolved into their elements. But the species or genus, the typical 
man or animal, representing all of them, persists, and endures for¬ 
ever as the universal Idea. In this Idea, as I have already said, 
are present all the necessary and essential attributes of the species ; 
all the rest, belonging exclusively to one individual or another, is 
accidental and transitory. The most general of all is the Idea, or 
pure Thought in itself; free from all determinateness, from every 
definite quality, from any individuality; — Being that is not 
mingled with any Non-being, but is pure and Absolute Being in 
and for itself. 

Perhaps enough has been said to make plain what is the start¬ 
ing point of Hegelianism, and the kind of reasoning whereby we 
are conducted to it. But I will add one other consideration, taken 
from the subjective aspect of the question. The ground of our 
erroneous conviction that the individual as cognized by sense is 
true or real being is, that the Ego immediately apprehends it as 
6uch. As Sir W. Hamilton would say, I am directly or immedi¬ 
ately conscious of this individual perception, for instance, of the 
written paper now before me. But Hegel answers, consider first, 
that such perception necessarily involves two individual factors, — 
this Ego, or the individual I who perceive, and this paper as the 
object of the perception. Since both these factors must be present 
in order to constitute the perception, it is evident that each is con¬ 
ditioned by the other; in other words, it could not exist except 


HEGEL. I. — ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


367 


‘hrough the medium or intervention of the other. Then, neither is 
immediate. I can have the certainty of perception only through 
the other, that is, through the paper perceived ; and the paper 
cannot be perceived except through me as perceiving it. The 
paper enables me to be conscious of myself as perceiving; but 
there is no certainty of the existence of the paper, except through 
my existence as perceiving it. But it is reasoning in a circle, first 
to prove A by B, and then B by A ; first, to give me conscious¬ 
ness of myself through the paper, and then assurance of the paper 
through my consciousness of self. Then, this Ego and this sheet 
of paper are equally unreal, mere phenomenal manifestations of 
the Universal, the Absolute, the Idea. 

If perception of individual things by the senses is thus a source 
only of illusion and error, can we acquire any clearer and better 
founded knowledge of them through reflection, which is the opera¬ 
tion of the Understanding ? As we do not perceive a tree, for in¬ 
stance, in its true being, through the faculty of sense , let us ex¬ 
amine the process through which we attempt to conceive it, by the 
action of thought, i. e., by reflecting upon the essential attributes of 
the whole class of objects — namely, trees — to which it belongs. 
How do we conceive “tree” in general, and not merely this or that 
particular tree ? We first conceive it as the universal substance, 
“ treedom ” it might be called, which is here incorporated and fixed 
in this particular instance by a definite form, — say, by the special 
shape, size, and other qualities of the trunk, branches, leaves, fruit, 
etc., of this one specimen now before us. Just so, we may regard 
triangularity as the universal substance of all “ triangles ” whatso¬ 
ever, £nd this “ universal ” as embodied in the particular dimen¬ 
sions of the sides and angles of the one triangle now drawn upon 
the blackboard. Or we may take, with equal propriety, just the 
reverse method: we may regard the substance, or particular Mat¬ 
ter, as the special and determinate form or unity, in which the 
universal attributes or properties of all trees — namely, having 
root, trunk, branches, leaves, and blossoms — are here united or 
embodied. These attributes then appear as the more Universal, 
and the definite form of their union in this one case as the Indi¬ 
vidual or Particular. Thirdly, we may help ourselves out of the 
perplexity arising from the opposition of these two methods by 
considering the “ tree ” as the product of a single tree-producing 
Force in Nature, expressing or developing itself according to def¬ 
inite internal physical laws. This Power, which we generally call 
organic or physical Force, this general principle of creation, for- 


368 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


mation, and self-development, expresses itself here, in an individ¬ 
ual and determinate manner, in this particular tree ; just as, else¬ 
where, it shows itself in all other trees. But this same physical 
Force reveals itself, not only in trees, but in countless other phys¬ 
ical objects, — in the formation of the chemical elements, in dif¬ 
ferent plants, minerals, animals, etc. In short, by the idea of 
Power or Force, we understand a universal relation or law of 
Nature and of our own consciousness; the law, namely, whereby 
anything does not stand in need of any other thing, outside of it¬ 
self, in order to complete and furnish forth its own definite exist¬ 
ence ; but it develops all that it is out of itself alone. 

Now, through this conception or intuition, call it which we may, 
of an immanent or indwelling Power or Force to develop one’s 
self, we are raised to a higher stage of our consciousness, and into 
a wholly new circle of thought. According to the common view, 
both in sensation and reflection, a foreign object , a Non-Ego, 
stands over against the subjective consciousness, and these two 
together, namely, the Object and the Subject, first create a whole, 
which is the representation or mental picture of the Object. Here, 
a difference of opinion exists upon the question which of these two 
factors is the necessary and the universal, and which furnishes only 
the limiting and individual element. According to one theory, the 
universal of our subjective Sensation is limited and individualized 
by the determinateness of the Object to which we refer this Sen¬ 
sation ; according to the other, the universal objective essence, the 
being of things in general, is restricted and made finite through the 
definite forms in which they are apprehended by us. But the 
ground of opposition between the two opinions falls away, when 
we have learned to know things as the identity of the immanent 
Power or Force and its Manifestation. Every thing then appears 
to us as a unit complete in itself, and shut off from every thing 
else; — as an essence unfolding itself from itself, and referring it¬ 
self back to itself; — in one word, as an Ego, I myself. Then 
falls away also the opposition between ourselves and the objects of 
our perception and thought; for we are ourselves just such a 
Power or Force, which unfolds or develops itself from and 
through itself. As a tree develops itself from the seed, first into 
the tender shoot, then into a sapling, and so into the fully formed 
trunk with its wealth of branches, foliage, and fruit, all by an 
inherent vegetative force which was perfect, though latent, in its 
/east developed form, the seed; so the human mind, the Ego of 
sonsciousness, even in its infantine state, has the latent and intrin- 


HEGEL. I. — ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


369 


sic power, without any agencies operating upon it from without, 
of subsequently developing itself into the universe of perceptions, 
thoughts, cognitions, and feelings, which form the theatre on which 
it acts its ideal life. TVe need not external objects to enable our 
consciousness to run this, its destined, career; but it contains 
within itself all the forms and determinations, through which it is 
successively expressed. Our consciousness is Self-consciousness. 
Nay, the tree and the Ego are one. Each is but the expression of 
the other ; each is but the manifestation of one intrinsic imma¬ 
nent Force. Every thing is Ego, and so also is Man. 

But I need not carry any further this analysis and explanation 
of the Phenomenology, which is the foreporch or introduction to 
Hegelianism. Strictly speaking, it does not constitute a portion 
of the system itself, but is only a preparation for it, an attempted 
demonstration of the principle from which it is to start, and of the 
method which it is to follow. Hegel himself calls it his voyage of 
discovery, the result of his endeavors to find, by a rigorously logi¬ 
cal examination of the sources and nature of human knowledge, 
some one absolute principle, some firmly set basis of science, whence 
could be deduced and demonstrated, in proper order and connec¬ 
tion, not only all that now appears perceptible to sense or cogniza¬ 
ble by the understanding, but an explanation of the history of 
things, and of the rise and progress of the universe as it is now 
present to our thought. I have already cited his criticism of the 
philosophy of Schelling, that, in it, the Absolute, the starting point 
of all inquiry and the origin and foundation of all existence, ap¬ 
pears, as it were, shot out of a pistol, — an arbitrary assumption, 
made only because something must be taken for granted, or phi¬ 
losophy will have no rest for the sole of her foot, and the secret why 
this universe is manifested to us rather than any other, or why any 
universe, indeed, should exist, either in appearance or in reality, 
will remain forever undivulged. In opposition to this loose and 
uncritical procedure, Hegel claims to have demonstrated in the 
Phenomenology, that individual and concrete existences, appearing 
before consciousness as perceived by sense or cognized in thought, 
are unreal and illusive, mere phenomenal manifestations of the one 
Absolute and Universal Being, perfectly indeterminate, which, by 
an inherent power, an “ Immaneut Dialectic,” develops itself into 
*11 that has been, is, or will be. To follow and explain, step by 
step, this process of development of the All from the One, is what 
Hegel claims to have accomplished in his philosophy. 

Let us admire first the boldness of the undertaking, — to ex- 
24 


370 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


plain every thing which is in heaven or on earth by the mere evo¬ 
lution of logical thought, whose spontaneous movement produces, 
out of itself, on the one hand, the material universe, and on the 
other, the intelligible or ideal world as it is present to conscious¬ 
ness. These two worlds, indeed, are at bottom identical with each 
other, being two similar though opposite manifestations of a single 
force. The absolute Idea of Hegel, unlike the universal substance 
of Spinoza, is essentially subjective ; it is Spirit or Ego. Hence, 
the proper name of the system is “ Absolute Idealism.” Now, all 
Spirit or Thought is one, individual differences, as we have seen, 
being merged in the universality of the Absolute. Hence, the 
mind of man, because it is identical with the divine or universal 
thought, can think over again, or re-create in thought, the move¬ 
ment which first constituted, and still constitutes, the real and ideal 
universe. Universal history, the history of the human mind, of 
the sciences and the arts, of morals, laws, customs, religion, and 
philosophy, — all will be reproduced and explained by the self¬ 
evolution of thought from pure Being, or Nothing. Absolute Ideal¬ 
ism aspires to nothing less than omniscience, to the science of God ; 
or rather it does not merely aspire to, but declares that it actually 
possesses, this science, which is inherent, though latent, in itself, 
and needs only to be unfolded by a process which is spontaneous, 
and requires only to be observed, not to be guided. 

According even to the common notion, God, being the principle 
and cause of every thing, must for that very reason possess in 
himself alone the supreme knowledge of causes and principles, the 
science of the essence of things ; and it is worthy of man to aspire 
after this divine scieuce. Nothing is possible except through 
thought; and every reality presupposes a thought equal to itself. 
No finite being can exhaust in thought the reality of all that ex¬ 
ists, and still less can it comprehend the possibility and reality 
of all things. Then there must be an infinite intelligence, which 
perfectly conceives all possibility as possible, and all reality as 
real; and this intelligence is God. But according to what we 
have now learned, all difference and plurality being done away 
with, the divine and the human are one, and man’s spirit itself is 
identical with this infinite intelligence. We must say of every 
thing which exists, that it exists and is maintained by an eter¬ 
nal act of knowledge on the part of the Absolute; and the spirit 
of man, being itself the Absolute, has the faculty of reproducing 
freely, through speculative thought, this eternal act of knowl¬ 
edge ; and true philosophy is nothing else than such reproduction. 


HEGEL. I.—ALL RESOLVED INTO ONE. 


371 


The world, says Hegel, is a flower which proceeds eternally from 
a single germ. This flower is the divine Idea, absolute and uni¬ 
versal ; and its spontaneous unfolding into full blossom is the 
self-development of pure thought. 

As Dr. Stirling acutely observes, the systems of Locke and 
Hegel, though they are seemingly opposites, are really comple¬ 
ments of each other, and thus, in one sense, are identical. Locke 
says, Concepts, or abstract general ideas, are abstractions from sen¬ 
sations ; and Hegel only begins at the other end when he says, 
that sensations are concretions from Concepts or abstract ideas. 
Here, again, we perceive the conciliatory character of the Hegelian 
method, which resolves apparent contradiction into unity, and 
thereby enables us to say with impunity, and even with a sem¬ 
blance of great profundity of thought, that black is white. But the 
philosophy of Hegel, Dr. Stirling claims, is an improvement on 
that of Locke, in that it begins with pure abstract thought, which 
is, so to speak, “ alive in itself,” and is therefore able by its own 
activity to clothe itself with successive concrete forms and finite 
distinctions; while the objects of sense, because passive and inert, 
are incapable of evolution through their own power into higher 
forms. It seems to me, however, that this advantage is counter¬ 
balanced by a great defect; for pure thought, through excessive 
abstraction, has been divorced even from the thinker; and without 
the cooperation of the Ego, it does not appear, in any proper 
sense, to be “ alive,” or to be capable of exercising any function of 
life. 

In order to make more clear what is to follow, something should 
here be said in explanation of Hegel’s peculiar use of words, 
though I shall not attempt, in what follows, always to employ the 
words in the perverted meaning which he attaches to them. Ab¬ 
stract and concrete have, in his philosophy, almost the opposite of 
their ordinary meaning. The Idea in its concrete state represents, 
in his system, infinite virtuality, or the * yet undeveloped capacity 
of becoming something else. It is the state of involution or poten¬ 
tiality, in which all is as yet involved in one. Things are abstract 
when they have been evolved, or, as it were, drawn out into actu¬ 
ality from this their hitherto ideal or potential condition. Thus, 
abstraction is not a quality, considered apart from its subject, but a 
thing regarded separately from the idea which is its essence. 

In order to explain the three technical phrases, an sick, fur sich, 
an und fur sich, the frequent use of which makes Hegel’s exposi¬ 
tion of his system so obscure, I borrow with some abridgment the 


372 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


language and illustrations of Mr. Wallace. That is an sick which 
is in itself, or implicit; it is given in the germ, but is, as yet, un¬ 
developed. It is the potential as opposed to the actual, the latent 
as distinguished from the realized. The oak is contained an sich 
in the acorn. 

That is fur sich, for itself, which has become explicit and actual. 
It is the result of an sich when developed, and is applied to what 
has been acquired and made our own, as opposed to what was 
given in a crude condition. Thus, a human being, even in a state 
of infancy, has a capacity for reason; he is an sich rational; but 
it is for him to realize this endowment and become rational fur 
sich. 

Hence the phrase an und fur sich, in and for itself, is applied 
to denote both what is pure and entire, and what is spontaneous 
and independent. The thing is taken in the entirety of its devel¬ 
opment, and that development is due to the evolution of its own 
native forces. It is the Absolute, in so far as it has passed 
through the Moments of the Process, and become every thing 
which it was destined to be. 

The double meaning of the Latin word explicatio indicates the 
nature of the movement by which every thing is produced; to un¬ 
twine or explain is, in the language of Hegel, to show what place 
anything occupies in the general development of thought. To 
comprehend is to know the origin or previous form of a thing; 
thus, we comprehend the universe when we understand how it is 
developed from the Absolute Idea. To prove is to reduce empir¬ 
ical data to their general expression, or in other words, to formu¬ 
late them as the results of a general law. It was thus, says Hegel, 
that Kepler demonstrated the facts of the solar system, reducing 
them to their most general expression in his three celebrated laws. 
The various elements and distinct existences are only so many 
“ Moments,” or successive steps, in the universal movement of the 
one Idea; they are transitory forms, which have nothing real or 
permanent. “ Self-diremption ” is the spontaneous separation of a 
notion into its opposite parts, each being set off against the other 
as its contradictory. 


CHAPTER XX. 


Hegel. II. — One developed into All. 

We begin with what has been proved in the Phenomenology to 
be the only absolute reality, namely, Pure Being, which is uni¬ 
versal, and therefore wholly indeterminate, having no parts or 
attributes whereby it can be distinguished from anything else, and 
so potentially comprehending every thing. This Idea, for it evi¬ 
dently exists only in thought, of abstract or pure Being, is the ulti¬ 
mate and absolute abstract; for it is that which remains after all 
qualities whatsoever have been thrust aside, and abstraction has 
been made from the whole world. It is the comprehensive, vague 
infinitude of Being, having its circumference everywhere, and its 
centre nowhere. It is every thing in general, or in the abstract, 
precisely because it is nothing in particular. “ Let there be no 
earth, no sun, no star in all the firmament; let there be no mind, 
no space, no time, no God. Let the universe disappear.” Still 
we have not got rid of this conception of Being in the abstract, 
which is absolutely essential to thought; for even if we declare 
that ‘‘nothing is,” the word nothing can be understood only as 
No-being , or the opposite of Being, and therefore could not be 
predicated except through a previous thought of Being, of which it 
is the negation. Just as the definition of parallel lines, “ lines that 
do not meet , however far extended,” would have no significance to 
us if we did not already know what meeting is, — that is, what the 
idea is which parallelism denies; so, to affirm that Nothing is, is 
also to affirm that we think Being as such, for this is the positive, 
of which Nothing is the negative. To adopt the technicalities of 
Logic, Pure Being has infinite Extension, since it denotes or in¬ 
cludes every thing, whether real or imaginary; and no Intension, 
for it connotes no mark or attribute whatever. 

Now the problem which Hegelianism seeks to solve is, to ex¬ 
plain how the phenomenal universe — all that now is or has been, 
whether in reality or in pure thought — is self-evolved from this 
Absolute Idea of Pure Being; evolved from it, because, as al- 


374 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ready said, the Absolute Idea potentially, or as Hegel would say, 
in the concrete, includes every thing, though in an involved or 
latent state; and self-evolved, because, as nothing exists outside of 
or beyond the Idea, there is nothing without to produce or assist 
the evolution, but it must take place by an internal and intrinsic 
Force, a necessary process of development from within; just as, to 
recur to a former illustration, the vegetative force inherent in the 
seed develops out of it, step by step, first the tender shoot, then 
the sapling, and at last the stately oak. Hegel undertakes not 
only to follow severally the various “ Moments of the Process,” 
that is, the successive steps of this self-evolution, from what is 
most universal and indeterminate up to what is most particular and 
definite, but to show how the whole Process takes place by suc¬ 
cessive exertions of one and the same. Force inherent in the Idea, 
— or in other words, by constant repetition in act of what he calls 
the “Immanent Dialectic” of pure thought. To this end he in 
vents a new Logic, which is only an improvement on that with 
which we have already become familiar in the philosophy of 
Fichte and Schelling. He lays it down as a universal law of pure 
thought, that every concept (. Begriff ) becomes more and more 
definite, that is, assumes one additional attribute after another, by 
successive acts of heterization or self-diremption; in each case, first 
passing over into the opposite or contradictory Concept, and then, 
by an act of synthesis resolving this contradiction, destroying the 
opposition between them, and uniting the two contradictories into 
a higher and more definite Concept. On this, again, the same 
Process is repeated, and so on indefinitely. Thus we rise, by a 
series of “trichotomies,” as he calls them, just as by successive 
steps of a ladder, from the vague and indeterminate Idea of Pure 
Being up to the universe of definite conceptions and distinct real¬ 
ities, as these are grasped by the understanding or presented to 
the sense. He displays marvellous ingenuity and comprehensive¬ 
ness of thought in the use of this logical invention, finding trichot¬ 
omies everywhere, and by their aid bestriding the universe as with 
seven-leagued boots, thus aiming to repeat in thought God’s act of 
creation, whereby the world was evolved out of nothing, or rather 
out of the thought of its Creator. Empiricism begins with the 
particular, with single phenomena and individual concrete exist¬ 
ences, rising from these, by abstraction of differences, to what is 
universal and comparatively indeterminate. Philosophy, Hegel 
maintains, does precisely the reverse: it begins with the exclusion 
of all finite differences, that is, with the universal and infinite, and 


HEGEL, n. — ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 375 

from this comes down by successive determinations to the point 
where Empiricism''began. It is not we who are to bring differ¬ 
ences into the Absolute, but the Absolute which must produce 
them from itself, and thereby evolve the relative and definite out 
of its own essence. 

The logic of trichotomy is so original and peculiar, and Hegel’s 
success is so great in using it as a process of passing from one 
thought to another, that some illustrations of it here may be use¬ 
ful, as they will throw light upon the whole system. All Judgment 
is an act of determination, whereby the subject is rendered more 
definite by affirming or predicating of it one or more attributes. 
Thus, the Concept A, at first entirely vague, acquires one stage of 
determinateness, when we judge that A is B. But in so judging, 
we contradict A ; for we declare that A is no longer A, but that 
it is B. And yet this contradiction is immediately resolved or 
denied by the result of the judgment, which is the complex and 
determinate affirmation of A B. We can make this clearer by 
taking a concrete instance. When I say that “Iron is hard,” 
thereby endeavoring to make my conception of “ iron ” more de¬ 
terminate by adding to it the attribute of “ hardness,” I really make 
the two terms contradict each other; inasmuch as the judgment 
is, that iron is no longer iron, but is hard; and that hard is no 
longer hard, but is iron. Now the old Logic, which is the Logic 
still taught in the schools, affirms that contradictories exclude each 
other, or are incompatible, so that, of two contradictories, one must 
be true, and the other must be false ; the two cannot be true to¬ 
gether. But the Hegelian Logic affirms that this is not true, but 
that the synthesis, which is the result of the judgment, unites the 
two contradictories into the single but more determinate affirma¬ 
tion of “ hard iron.” What once was two contradictory thoughts, 
namely, “iron ” and “hard,” each being indeterminate, because not 
any attribute was affirmed of either, is now one determinate 
thought, namely, “ hard iron.” Accordingly, as all Thought con¬ 
sists of Judgments, this is the universal law of Thought, whereby 
we proceed from the abstract, the universal, and the indetermi¬ 
nate, to the concrete, the particular, and the definite. This, then, 
is the “Immanent Dialectic” of pure Thought: every thought 
or concept first denies itself by affirming some attribute of itself, 
and then denies this denial by uniting the thought and attribute 
into one higher and more determinate thought. And since this is 
a universal law of Thought, it is also a universal law of Things, 
for, according to Hegel, Things exist only in Thought. 


376 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


I take, almost at random, some instances of the application of 
the law to what we call “ Things,” that is, to concrete existences. 
A drawing or engraving is made by the pen, pencil, or graver, 
with which the artist puts in the outlines and shadows wherewith 
to bring out the result. But the lines and surfaces shadowed would 
not alone constitute the picture, without the opposite or contradic¬ 
tory of shadow, namely, the lights, or the portions of the paper over 
which no lines are drawn; and it is precisely the union of these 
two contradictories, light and shade, which forms the picture. As 
yet, however, it is a colorless picture, mere light and shade. Now 
put in the contradictory of “ colorless,” namely, some definite color, 
say, green; and then we have, not a mere drawing in light and 
shade, but a painting, though a poor one, for it has only one color, 
green. Then put in the contradictory of this, that is, some other 
color, which is “ not-green,” say, brown. And thus continuously 
add other colors, each being the contradictory of those already 
used, because not the same with any one of them, and, as the final 
result, we have a rich and varied painting, made up, step by step, 
by the union of contradictories. And this Process is creation, as 
of a work of art, so of what we call a “ work of nature,” since both 
exist only in thought, and therefore are products or creations of 
thought. 

According to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory, founded, as he claims, 
on observation, the universal law for the course of development or 
growth in the organic kingdom is a process whereby homogeneity 
is self-evolved into heterogeneity, the like into the unlike, the 
simple always developing itself by throwing off the opposite or 
contradictory of itself, and these two contradictories then uniting 
into a higher, because more complex, stage of the organism. What 
is this but Hegelianism in physiology, though wrought out by in¬ 
duction from observed facts, while Hegel developed it a -priori 
from the depths of his own consciousness? The beginning of all 
organisms, according to Professor Huxley, is protoplasm, a pasty 
substance as homogeneous and formless throughout as hasty pud¬ 
ding ; and in this there is self-developed, or spontaneously gener¬ 
ated, a nucleated cell, which is the opposite of that from which it 
was generated, inasmuch as it has Form, — that is, a difference of 
parts, and these parts having a relation to each other, while the 
protoplasm was formless. Each cell then develops and pushes 
pff from itself, by a sort of fissiparous generation, other cells, 
each differentiated from, and therefore, the opposite of, every 
other. and of the narent, cell, and thus heeominor the distinctive 



HEGEL, n. — ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


377 


elements and seminal principles of the several heterogeneous 
parts and organic compounds which finally constitute one animal 
economy. 

Take another example from the science of mechanics. Every 
planet, in its revolution round its primary, is held and propelled 
in its orbit by the union and counteraction of two opposite forces, 
the centripetal and centrifugal. By the former, the action of 
gravity, it is constantly drawn towards the centre; and by the lat¬ 
ter, the tangential force, it is always striving to fly off into distant 
space. And the union of these opposite tendencies is the single 
force which keeps the body perpetually whirling in its appointed 
path, while the elimination of either would instantly destroy the 
system. This law of the solar system is but one example of the 
universal principle in Mechanics, which is usually called the par¬ 
allelogram of forces, whereby any force whatever may be decom¬ 
posed into its equivalent, two other forces which counteract each 
other as to the lines of direction on which they act, since these 
two lines meet at an angle, and thus form two adjacent sides of a 
parallelogram, of which the original force is the diagonal. 

I have already mentioned two geometrical examples: first, that 
although convergence is the contradictory of divergence, the same 
two straight lines inclined to each other both converge and di¬ 
verge ; converge from A to B, and diverge from B to A; and 
secondly, though convexity is the contradictory of concavity, the 
same curved line is both convex and concave. Then two contra¬ 
dictories, instead of being incompatible with each other, are but 
two aspects of one and the same truth. 

Take a theological example in the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
God, as infinite, is the contradictory of Man, as finite ; therefore, 
God can be reconciled to Man only by God becoming Man, the 
two natures, finite and infinite, human and divine, becoming one in 
the person of our Lord, who is both God and Man. Of course, 
the doctrine of the Trinity is but another aspect of the same truth. 

These are miscellaneous examples taken at random; but they 
are enough to show that Hegel’s logic, or, as he calls it, the Im¬ 
manent Dialectic of pure thought, is an instrument of wide range 
of application, and fertile in effecting new and striking combina¬ 
tions of ideas. But we have now to make a systematic use of it 
in the series of evolutions through which the universe of realities 
is developed from nothing into distinct consciousness. 

We begin, as already stated, with the Absolute Idea of Pure 
Being, which, as absolute and universal, is entirely vague and in- 


378 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


determinate, having no quality or attribute whatsoever wherewith 
to be distinguished from any other being, and therefore potentially 
including all other being within itself. It corresponds exactly to 
the definition of universal Substance by Spinoza, from whom 
Hegel probably borrowed it, as that which exists in itself and is 
conceived for itself, and therefore can be conceived without pre¬ 
supposing a conception of anything else. As Being, it is the op¬ 
posite or contradictory of No-being, or Nothing; and yet, as per¬ 
fectly vague and indeterminate, having no attribute whatever, it is 
identical with Nothing, from which it cannot be discriminated in 
any respect. Nonentis nulla sunt attributa. Here, then, we have 
a synthesis of two contradictories. How can their union be ex¬ 
plained ? By the notion of becoming, through which one passes 
into the other. As Being is the same with Nothing, the truth of 
Being, as well as the truth of Nothing, is found in the union of 
the two, or in fusing one into the other; and this union is found 
in the one becoming the other. Thus, we may ask respecting 
“ the sunset,” whether it consists in the presence or the absence of 
the sun. In fact, it consists in neither; for if the sun is still 
above the horizon, sunset is not yet; and if it be below the hori¬ 
zon, the sunset is past. It consists in the passage (the Becoming) 
from one to the other. ' In like manner, water becomes ice; but so 
far as it is water, it is not ice; and so far as it is ice, it is not 
water. Water, therefore, becomes not-water, and ice becomes 
not-ice. Thus the process of becoming is the union of is with is 
not, or of a particular mode of existence with the negation of that 
mode. 

To conceive Nothing as becoming Being, is to conceive crea¬ 
tion ; and to conceive Being as becoming Nothing, is to conceive 
annihilation. As the result of a synthesis of two factors or ele¬ 
ments must be more determinate (since it can now be defined as 
the union of the two) than either of these factors taken singly, the 
creation of Being out of Nothing is properly the creation of exis¬ 
tence ( Daseyn ), which is determinate being, or, as Dr. Stirling 
chooses to render it, So-being, — Being in some determinate form 
or manifestation, rather than in any other. Thus, as the begin¬ 
ning of thought attempting to become definite and fixed for itself, 
we have the genesis of one of Kant’s first Categories, Quality, 
through which alone any one existence can be discriminated from 
another. But this assumption of Quality gives me forthwith a 
conception of one thing as distinguished from others, and is there¬ 
fore properly the conception of Unity ; that is, Quality immedi- 


HEGEL. II. — ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


379 


ately passes over into its opposite or “other,” Quantity , the second 
of Kant’s Categories. Again, Unity can be conceived as Unity 
only through being discriminated from its contradictory, Many or 
Plurality. But the contradiction between them is immediately 
resolved, and one passes over into the other, or becomes the other, 
when we consider that Many or Plurality is only an aggregate of 
Units or Ones, these not differing from each other. The Many, 
therefore, are One, and the One is equally Many; and the synthe¬ 
sis of these two is definite quantity, or Number. As mere Quan¬ 
tity, this has no Quality, but relates only to Magnitude. Then, 
again, Magnitude presents itself as the union of two contradictory 
Quantities, namely, Discrete, in which the units are distinguishable, 
and Continuous, in which they are homogeneous and flow into 
each other; yet this contradiction is immediately resolved, and the 
two opposites become identical, when it is considered that Conti¬ 
nuity cannot be thought without Discreteness, (for example, the 
table is so many distinct feet in length,) nor Discreteness without 
Continuity, the distinct units being added together as one Magni¬ 
tude. Thus we obtain definite or limited Magnitude, which is the 
quantum , or “ How much.” This is extensive Magnitude, as Num¬ 
ber, the opposite of which is intensive Magnitude, as Degree. In 
this notion of Degree, which is conceived as the relative amount 
of some one attribute or power, Quantity returns to Quality; and 
the union of Quantity and Quality is Measure. Then Measure, or 
Proportion, k a qualitative quantum , the Quality depending on the 
Quantum, or “ How much” of the power or attribute is present. 
For instance, add a certain amount of heat, and ice becomes water; 
add a farther amount, and the water becomes steam. Then the 
different Qualities of ice, water, and steam depend on the relative 
Quantity, or Measure, of heat. But again, the Quantity and 
Quality of any definite thing can be distinctly conceived only as 
resulting from its Essence, or that internal constitution of it on 
which we suppose all its attributes to depend. For instance; as 
we conceive the Essence, or internal constitution, of oxygen to 
differ from that of hydrogen, the latter manifests less weight and 
more volume than the former, these being quantitative differences ; 
and while hydrogen appears inflammable and incapable of support¬ 
ing respiration, oxygen maintains combustion and supplies the vital 
part to the breath, these being differences of quality. Change the 
Essence of either, and you will thereby change both its quantita¬ 
tive and qualitative characteristics. 

And here let us pause for a moment to take breath, and review 


380 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


in thought the bewildering phantasmagoria of abstractions that we 
have traversed. The discussion is abstruse, for it is concerned ex¬ 
clusively with the highest abstractions and generalizations which 
the human mind can form; and it is repulsive, owing to the cease¬ 
less repetition of one uniform process, contradictories and syntheses 
perpetually succeeding each other, one set of them being included 
in another, like a nest of chip-boxes. One tires of eternal trichot¬ 
omies, the perpetual recurrence of which reminds him only of the 
old-fashioned game, the frequent burden of which was a triumphant 
“ tit, tat, too ! ” But the process is by no means unintelligible, and 
it has an imposing air, owing to the novelty and seeming univer¬ 
sality of the method employed. Let me endeavor to illustrate the 
method, then, by adopting more familiar phraseology. 

The. word “ thing ” is the most comprehensive substantive which 
language furnishes, since it includes every thing and wo-thing. 
But on account of this very universality, we cannot think it, we 
cannot form any definite idea of it; since there is nothing from 
which it can be discriminated, for it includes every thing, and it 
cannot have any quality or attribute whatsoever, the possession of 
which distinguishes one thing from another. Now let us endeavor 
to think “ thing,” by investing it successively with the most com¬ 
prehensive of all attributes, proceeding from these, step by step, to 
those which are less comprehensive, thus approximating by regular 
degrees to the conception of some one “ thing,” which, as having 
numberless attributes, is thereby distinguished from every other 
“thing.” We will first suppose “thing” to possess quality in 
general, any quality, since the possession of any one distinguishes 
an existing thing ( Daseyn ) from that which maybe either existent 
or non-existent, — Pure Being ( Seyn ). Next, we may suppose it 
to possess quantity in general, or magnitude , in either one of its 
three forms, as (1) more or less (Magnitude in general), (2) as 
one or many (Number), and (3) as more or less intense (Degree). 
As “ things ” now differ from each other in quality and quantity , 
we must conceive this difference to result from some difference in 
their internal constitution, nature, or Essence; as when we say, it 
is the nature or essence of iron to be hard and malleable, and of 
hydrogen to be aeriform and combustible. This conception of 
“ Essence ” marks the precise “ Moment of the Process, ” or stage 
of development of the Absolute Idea of “thing,” from absolute in¬ 
determinateness and universality to definiteness and particularity, 
»t which we have now arrived. 

Furthermore, this “ Process ” necessarily takes place by way of 


HEGEL. H.—ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


381 


trichotomy , that is, by the successive evolution of “differences,” 
(which Hegel chooses to call “ contradictories,” though more fre¬ 
quently they are only “contraries,”) and then by the reconciliation 
of these “ differences ; ” that is, by the union or synthesis of the 
differentiating attribute with the “ thing.” Of course, when the 
whole end and aim of the “ Process ” is to differentiate and dis¬ 
tinguish “ thing ” in general into some one “ thing in particular,” 
we must 'proceed, by the successive assumption of differences, or 
“ contradictions,” and by the union or synthesis of the attributes, 
which are the bases of these “ contradictions,” with the “ thing.” 
“ Trichotomy” is only a name for the mental process whereby we 
assign in thought any predicate to any object of thought; but it is 
a forced and awkward analysis of that process, a contemplation of 
it under one of its least familiar aspects, in order to justify the use 
of such an appellation. 

Any one who has followed intelligently the exposition thus far 
really understands Hegelianism, — understands it in all its prin¬ 
ciples and essential characteristics; for what I have now stated is 
Hegelianism in a nutshell. All that remains is to carry out the 
system into a countless multitude of details, every thing in nature 
and every object of thought, every department of science and art, 
every chapter of history, philosophy, and theology, being obviously 
susceptible of what I may call analysis by the trichotomic method; 
or in other words, of becoming more and more definite in thought 
by the successive assumption of attributes, — that is, of differ¬ 
ences or “ contradictions.” With a plodding industry, a mastery 
of details, and a facility in dealing with the highest abstractions 
of human thought, which are truly German, for they are thorough¬ 
ly characteristic of his countrymen, Hegel has applied the system 
throughout the length and breadth of the land; in eighteen solid 
octavos, he has carried it, so to speak, into every nook and crevice 
of reality and thought. It has an imposing air, owing to its vast 
reach and comprehensiveness, its applicability even to the minutest 
details, the formidable array of abstruse technicalities in which it 
is enveloped, and the systematic manner, the perfect precision and 
order, with which it is applied to the successive grades of abstrac¬ 
tion and generalization with which it deals. 

Then, too, it is not so very marvellous that Hegel should devel¬ 
op every thing out of the Absolute Idea, seeing that he had pre¬ 
viously, with great care, laboriously packed away every thing into 
it. He had so framed his definition of “Pure Being” in the 
outset, that it obviously included all being; and he had also, in 


382 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the “ Phenomenology,” as we have seen, elaborately attempted to 
prove that the particular, the concrete, and the individual are only 
the Universal in disguise. 

It seems almost like pricking a Titanic soap-bubble, to point out 
the one unauthorized assumption, and the single, though simple 
and plausible, analysis of a logical process of thought, which form 
the narrow premises, the sole but insufficient foundation, on which 
the whole theory is based. All beyond and above this is a jargon 
and jugglery of repulsive technicalities and minute details. The 
one assumption is — absolute Idealism, that Thought and Being are 
identical, or that Things exist only in Thought. Certainly it is easy 
to explain the process, and repeat the act, of creation, when there 
is nothing to create, except an evolution of thought from itself ; 
and the single and simple analysis of this evolution is contained in 
the dictum, that all predication is trichotomy ; in other words, that 
whenever we predicate an attribute of a subject, we deny; or con¬ 
tradict, that subject, because we affirm of it a difference or contra¬ 
dictory of itself; and of course, the more determinate subject, 
which is the result of the predication, is a reconciliation or synthesis 
of the two contradictories. I call this a mere juggle of words; for 
it is pure verbal fallacy to assert that the judgment “ A is B ” con¬ 
tradicts A, by maintaining that A is no longer A, but is B. 

To apply the system, as Goschel, Bauer, Daub, Marheineke, 
Strauss, and a host of others have done, to the gravest realities, 
the fundamental facts and highest truths, of ethics, politics, and 
theology, is mere paltering with words, and seems too much like 
mockery and blasphemy combined. Up to the time when “ the 
Master ” died, in 1831, he and his disciples carefully avoided any 
open breach with the positive dogmas of religion ; and thus arose 
the well-founded belief, that there were in the Hegelian school two 
sorts of doctrines, the one exoteric, for the public at large, and the 
other esoteric, for the initiated; and that the latter contained the 
most thorough-going skepticism, or the denial of all the positive 
truths of religion. And this belief was supported by the evident 
ambiguity of Hegel’s philosophy, which contains in itself both a 
principle of conservatism and a principle of progress or reform. 
According to the former, all the fixed dogmas of the Church, 
which constitute the orthodox creed, are and must be right and 
true; for they are a necessary “ Moment of the Process,” a nec¬ 
essary stage in the self-development of abstract or pure Thought. 
In a certain sense, in this, as in every other, system of fatalism, 
Pope’s version of the Leibnitzian doctrine of optimism holds true; 


i 


HEGEL. II. — ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


383 


“ whatever is, is right.” “ To the same purport,” says Menzel, 
“ the notorious proposition of Hegel, ‘ All that is Real is Rational,’ 
is made use of to show that the present condition of things is 
absolutely the most rational, and that it is not merely revolution¬ 
ary, but eminently stupid, foolish, and unphilosophical, to take ex¬ 
ceptions to it.” On the other hand, the system declares that any 
dogmatic creed is only a “ Moment of the Process,” and therefore 
is to pass away, and be followed by farther developments of 
thought, higher truths, which will take their place. What these 
higher developments are the young Hegelians taught us with a 
vengeance, after the death of “ the Master,” when Feuerbach, 
Brun; Bauer, Arnold Ruge, and others, preached the baldest infi¬ 
delity and red-republicanism under the name and garb of philos¬ 
ophy. 

The baseless assumptions which are involved in the initial steps 
of Hegelianism are ably pointed out by Trendelenburg. Pure 
Being constitutes the first step : and this is equivalent to Nothing, 
because it has no attribute or quality whatsoever whereby it can 
be distinguished from anything. Then it must be inert, motion¬ 
less, and unchangeable. To endow it with any principle of motion 
or change, and thus to render it capable of becoming any deter¬ 
minate existence, would be to take it out of the category of Pure 
Being. Then it cannot become; it is incapable of heterization ; 
it cannot either evolve “ the other ” from itself, or bring “ the 
other ” again into harmony with itself, through reconciling the 
contradiction between them. It must forever continue to be that 
to which it was equivalent at the outset, namely, Nothing. And 
the same difficulty emerges, if Pure Thought is regarded as the be¬ 
ginning of the Process, for this also, because it is “ Pure,” is 
wholly vague and indefinite, possesses no attribute whatever, and so 
cannot change, cannot become any particular thought. In order to 
render it capable of self-development, Hegel endows it with an in¬ 
ternal principle of activity, an “ Immanent Dialectic; ” but he fails 
to see that it thereby ceases to be “ Pure,” and therefore is no 
longer “ the absolute ” beginning of things. In this dilemma, in¬ 
deed, all these ambitious systems are involved. What they sup¬ 
pose to be primal, to be the origin of all being, either has no dis¬ 
tinguishing element, and therefore cannot become anything more 
than it was at the outset; or it must contain within itself a defi¬ 
nite seminal principle, by virtue of which it is necessarily devel¬ 
oped into the particular modes of definite being which now con¬ 
stitute the universe. To endow it with such a principle is already 


384 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


to create the universe in germ, through the agency of some un¬ 
seen Power; and we might just as well suppose that Power to 
preside over aud effectuate each step of the evolution. We are 
thus brought back to the truth already enunciated, that nothing 
can be evolved which was not previously involved. When the 
materialists say, that the atoms of the primitive fiery mist are the 
source of all forms of life, they must believe either that these 
atoms are homogeneous and indeterminate, and so have no ten¬ 
dency to evolve any one mode of existence rather than any other, 
or else that they were so constituted at the outset that all living 
things are necessarily developed from them; and this is only St. 
Augustine’s theory of potential and derivative creation. 

But it is time to go back to the point where we left Hegelian¬ 
ism, and to trace a few more steps of development of the Absolute 
Idea into concrete and phenomenal being. We had advanced as 
far as Essence, which is conceived as that internal constitution of 
things, of which their outward qualities and quantity are only the 
manifestation. ffence, it is a sort of inward or reflected being, so 
called from the analogy of light, which in its straight course im¬ 
pinging on a mirror, is thrown back or reflected from it. We 
see only the reflected ray, not the incident one, which comes from 
a different direction. Thus, we conceive Matter as a single and 
homogeneous substance, which appears under a variety of forms, 
but always preserves the identity of its Essence. Hence, when 
we propose to study the Essence of anything, we regard its out¬ 
ward visible form, of which the senses directly take cognizance, 
as only the rind or veil behind which the Essence is concealed- 
Hence, again, all things have a sort of double being in thought, 
of which the outer one, that is merely apparent or Inessential, is 
manifest to sense, while the inner one, the real being, is dis¬ 
cerned only by reason. And yet, though these two, the Inessen¬ 
tial and the Esseutial, are the opposites or contradictories of each 
other, each can be conceived or known only through the other, 
and each is therefore Essential to the other ; for the Essential 
only is in relation to the Inessential. This mutual relation be¬ 
tween them is what we have termed reflection , or reflected being. 
Therefore, all characters which are such that each is incogitable 
without the other (such as positive and negative, inner and outer, 
antecedent and consequent, identical and different, thing and qual¬ 
ity, matter and form, force and energy or the operation of force,) 
are determinations of this reflection or duality of being. 

Essence, as Leibnitz acutely remarks, belongs only to species and 


HEGEL. II. 


ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


385 


genera, that is, to classes of things, not to individuals. Accident 
or sickness may change my complexion or my weight; fever or a 
contusion may deprive me of reason and memory ; apoplexy may 
leave me even without feeling. Hence, if asked whether it is es¬ 
sential for me to have reason, I answer, No. But to “ Man ” in 
general, reason is essential, since it is a distinguishing attribute of 
humanity. Hence also, says Leibnitz, individuals may change 
their species ; a man may become a brute. 

The contrariety of any two of these opposite characters men¬ 
tioned above is reconciled in the notion of Ground, from which 
they both proceed. There is a common Ground, substratum, or 
Cause, on which the Essential and the Inessential, the real and 
the apparent, the inner and outer being, the Matter and the Form, 
alike equally depend. The Force can be explained only by the 
Energy or being put into operation, the Energy only by the 
Force. The identity of the two, of inner and outer, force and 
energy, essence and manifestation, is actuality , that which is, as 
distinguished from the merely possible or contingent, and from the 
necessary. What is necessary, regarded as its own ground or ori¬ 
gin, is Substance ; what is merely accidental or contingent is the 
Qualities, which are only transitory affections of the Substance, 
mutable phenomenal forms, the waves in relation to the water of 
the sea. Thus, to recur to a former illustration, water, ice, steam, 
mist, cloud, are only various phenomenal manifestations of one and 
the same Substance, which may exist successively in each of these 
forms, and, throughout all of them, is always at bottom the same, a 
compound of oxygen and hydrogen. This relation of Substance to 
its phenomena may be otherwise conceived as Cause and Effect, the 
Substance causing or producing its sensible Qualities, and the acci¬ 
dents being the effects of the Substance. But in this relation, the 
same matter is twice posited, once as Cause and once as Effect. I 
push against the table, but at the same moment, and in the same 
degree, the table pushes against me. Action and reaction are 
equal; each is equal to the other, and each is conceived successively 
as the other, as Cause and as Effect. There is no effect without 
counter effect, no action without reaction. This is the category 
of Reciprocity, in which the duplicity of Cause and Effect, Essence 
and Manifestation, has collapsed to unity. And this unity of the 
inner and outer being, the Essence and its visible form, is the 
Notion, or Concept, that we form of a thing. Thus, my Notion of 
<nan includes both the internal essence of humanity, that which 
25 


386 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


makes him “ man,” and his outward visible characteristics, a two- 
legged and two-handed animal without feathers. 

Observe how far we have now advanced, through the idea of 
Being, and that of Essence, which is its correlative and reflection, 
to the entire Notion or Concept of a thing, which includes them 
both. It is but following a similar evolution to trace the devel¬ 
opment of the Notion through its subjective and objective forms, 
—the thought, and the realization of that thought in external 
things, — to the Absolute Idea again, which appears as the unity 
of Cognition and Life, of the Idea or plan of the species, and of 
the species as embodying in outward form and actuality the Idea. 
God’s idea of creation is expressed in the universe; and it is only 
putting the same truth into other words, to say that the universe 
is the realization of the divine Idea. Thus we have two branches 
of the system, the first being a “ Philosophy of Nature,” according 
as the Idea has passed out into external reality as “ the other,” or 
contradictory, of itself, and the second, when, returning into it¬ 
self, and becoming more fully conscious of itself through its oppo¬ 
sition to Nature, it establishes a “ Philosophy of Spirit.” Both 
these “ philosophies ” are very ingeniously worked out by Hegel 
himself; they manifest great fertility of imagination and richness 
of thought, and abound with broad and striking generalizations, 
which may well be termed splendid sophisms, as they amaze and 
stun the student, without convincing him. Without entering into 
details, a few sketches will be enough to show the outlines of the 
two systems. 

As outward Nature is a departure of the Idea from itself into 
the contradictory of itself, it manifests, especially in its lower 
forms, tokens of the absence of Spirit or Mind, such as a sort 
of hap-hazard character, great variety, irregularity, and lawless¬ 
ness appearing in many shapes, which can with difficulty be re¬ 
duced to system and principle. It first appears as a mere chaos 
of shapeless rocks, earths, minerals, and water, confusedly hurled to¬ 
gether, and even in its lower essays towards vegetable and animal 
life, branching out into a countless multitude of fantastic forms, as 
if it were trying its “’prentice hand” at every thing and anything. 
It often confounds the lines of demarcation between species by 
meaningless variations, monstrous births, lusus nature, and the 
like. Nature, says Hegel, is a Bacchantic God, uncontrolled by, 
because unconscious of, himself, and therefore revelling in wild 
sports, regardless of law. Science is often obliged to compound 
with it, as it were, and to accept its products as imperfect reali- 


HEGEL, n. — ONE DEVELOPED INTO ALL. 


387 


zations of the speculative ideas which it is the office of Science 
to establish. The progress of Nature, its advance from lower to 
higher forms, is a record of struggles upwards, from shapeless, 
wild, and disjointed modes of being, to more complex and uniform 
results, to a nicer balance of opposing forces, and a final symme¬ 
try, order, and precision which mark the reign of mind. Inor¬ 
ganic inert Matter is its lowest form ; and this has but one trace 
of mind and unity, the law or nisus of gravitation, through which 
all its particles tend towards one centre, the centre of gravity, and 
in so doing are organized into unity, as in the solar system. In 
this, the periods of revolution are reducible to mathematical laws, 
and thereby the real becomes rational. Time and Space, which 
lie at the bottom of these mathematical laws, are not, according to 
Hegel, merely ideal factors, but contribute reality to the result. 
Thus, for example, a tile or slate, if only placed upon a man’s 
head, will not, from the mere action of gravity, kill him ; but if 
such a tile or slate falls upon him from a considerable height, as 
from the roof of a house, the blow will be mortal. Next come 
Physics, in which not merely quantitative relations are considered, 
as in Astronomy, but qualitative conditions necessarily come into 
view; we have here to regard, for instance, the differences be¬ 
tween the solid, fluid, and aeriform states of matter. In Chemis¬ 
try, again, all the characteristic properties of different substances 
change on the application of various reagents, and thus exhibit 
their inessential and fleeting nature as such, and so demonstrate 
the possibility of matter passing into higher forms. 

In living organisms, the chemical and vital forces hold a divided 
empire, and struggle against each other, the animate body resisting 
the chemical process during life, though minute portions of it are 
perpetually relapsing under the action of this antagonistic force, 
and the whole is finally abandoned to it at death. As life, the 
Idea passes through three distinct stages. First, in geological 
forms, it is only the result, the petrified remains, of a former life 
and process of formation. “ The earth of geology is a gigantic 
corpse.” Next, in vegetable life, the vital processes of growth, 
assimilation, and reproduction are complete, but the whole is, as 
yet, only an aggregate of parts imperfectly articulated into each 
other. Any one of the parts may be metamorphosed into any 
other, so that the leaf is potentially the whole organism. Every 
branch perfectly represents the entire tree. Lastly, in the animal 
kingdom, there is perfect intussusception, all the parts are mutually 
ends and means, each living only through the cooperation of the 


388 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


others. Here, too, we first hare spontaneous movement, sensation, 
and, in the higher forms, voice and internal warmth. And in its 
highest type, in Man, the spirit that works in Nature attains its 
culminating point, in the conscious unity and individuality of each 
living soul. 

We thus come back to Spirit, the Philosophy of which has still 
a series of stages to describe before the merely animal soul, subject 
to all the skyey influences, affected even by climatic differences 
and peculiarities of geographical type, can fully liberate itself from 
the operation of these purely physical causes, and rise to that uni¬ 
versal or rational self-consciousness, which has been all along its 
goal. Through Sensation and Feeling, which are but the blind 
gropings of unconscious individuality, the Subjective Spirit emerges 
at last to a cognition of itself as the Ego, which is the first step to 
Consciousness. Then, by distinguishing itself from Nature as the 
Non-Ego, and thus opposing itself to all objective existence, you 
and him, and other forms of humanity included, it recognizes itself 
as the free or universal Ego, and thus becomes, first, Theoretical 
Spirit or Intelligence, and secondly, Practical Spirit or Will. 
Then, in its attempts to carry out its own ideas into action, or to 
objectify them, it manifests itself as Objective Spirit, and thus lays 
the foundations of Legal Right, of Morality, of the Family, and 
the State. Finally, recognizing the identity of the two, and there¬ 
by reconciling the contradiction between its own Subjective and 
Objective manifestations, it advances to the stage of Absolute 
Spirit, which finds its three forms of expression in Art, Religion, 
and Philosophy. 

Here, then, is the bond of union, through which Hegel is enabled 
to speculate at large in the broad fields of History, Ethics, and 
Politics, of Art, Religion, and Philosophy, manifesting everywhere 
his unrivalled capacity for acute distinctions, novel theories, and 
broad generalizations, and still always directing his theoretical 
views by the principles of his own peculiar method, and forging 
them together into the unity of his system. This sketch of his 
philosophy cannot be carried farther without entering into a multi¬ 
tude of details, which, for the very reason that they are details, can 
be fairly appreciated only by those who have patience enough to 
follow them in Hegel’s own words. 


CHAPTER XXL 


Arthur Schopenhauer. I.— The World as Presentation 
and Will. 

Though the metaphysical system of Schopenhauer has at last, 
after remaining for forty years in neglect and obscurity, obtained 
much influence and reputation in Germany, and though his publi¬ 
cations show more literary and speculative ability and brilliancy 
than the writings of any of his German contemporaries, I hesi¬ 
tated long before introducing any account of them into this work. 
To analyze them, even for purposes of censure and refutation, 
seemed too much like promoting the dissemination of evil. For 
not only is much of his philosophy unsound and pernicious in ten¬ 
dency, but the writer himself was eminently a bad man. I speak 
of him only as he appears in his written works, and in a biograph¬ 
ical sketch of him published by one of his admiring disciples, Dr. 
William Gwinner, who attended him in his last illness. He may 
have shown some respectable or amiable qualities in private life, 
though there is no evidence of the fact, and it is hard to believe 
there was any element of good in him. In his books, he appears 
as a misanthrope, a pessimist, and an atheist; a hater of this 
world and of everybody in it, and one who believed in nothing 
except his own merits, and the injustice with which he was treated 
by his contemporaries. In my opinion, the world treated him just 
right; it passed him by with silent reprobation and neglect. This 
was not at all what he w*anted. He would have welcomed open 
abuse and any measure of noisy hostility; for he craved notoriety, 
and was justly confident of his power to shower mud faster than 
any of his adversaries. But that people should take no notice 
either of him or his books irritated him almost to frenzy. In¬ 
ordinately self-conceited, arrogant, irascible, and suspicious, his 
whole career was that of a literary Ishmael; his hand was against 
everybody, and, in a sense most galling to his pride, everybody’s 
hand was against him; for everybody slighted him. 

Then why take any notice of him here, since he died in 1860, 


390 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


and the world is well rid of him? Because, like Balaam, he often 
spoke the truth unwittingly, and, as it were, in spite of himself. 
The man had a positive genius for literature and metaphysics, 
though unquestionably it was an evil genius. Luckily, also, the 
the worst part of his doctrine, though it was his favorite part, is 
weakest, and cannot do much harm to anybody. But there are 
also many good things in his philosophy, though he put them 
there by mistake. These we can pick out, and leave the bad 
alone. He has often taught what is good and right, though most 
frequently with an evil purpose. In paving the way for his ulti¬ 
mate conclusions, which are often untrue and even diabolical, he 
has stumbled upon many intermediate truths of great moment, 
and has defended them with more wit, vigor, and originality than 
were ever expended upon them before. After the character now 
given to him, I am almost ashamed to add, that I have read his 
works not only with more interest and amusement, but in many 
parts positively with more instruction and delight, than those of 
any other metaphysician of this century. His very impudence 
and recklessness are sometimes an advantage, as they enable him 
to tell his mind with a vigor, raciness, and naivet6, which a consci¬ 
entious thinker could never rival. Like the man “ who spoke 
right out in meeting,” he often blurts out the truth with a direct¬ 
ness and simplicity which render it ten times more effective than 
if warily uttered, and in fit season. He detests’the whole tribe of 
German Professors of the Absolute, especially their leaders, 
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and as he is a hard hitter in con¬ 
troversy, he often does good service to truth by demolishing some 
of their paradoxes. Far from dissecting their theories at length, 
he pours upon them a volley of invective and abuse for their 
affected obscurity, their inordinate use of technicalities and ab¬ 
struse phraseology, and their general disregard of common sense. 
As a master of style, of literature, wit, and sarcasm, he is not only 
without a rival in Germany, but I hafdly know his equal any¬ 
where among writers of the present time. Macaulay is not more 
successful in ridiculing a theory, or Voltaire in demolishing an 
opponent. He writes more like a Frenchman than a German, 
with inimitable force, clearness, and precision, and with a wide 
range of illustration from every field of literature and science. It 
is a fact strangely illustrative of the state of literary taste in 
Germany, that writers, like Kant, of singular clumsiness, obscur- 
ty, and want of force, or, like Hegel, darkening counsel by ab¬ 
struse formulas and repulsive technicalities, should soon have 


ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 


391 


found there hosts of admiring disciples, while one of the most bril¬ 
liant writers of the age hardly obtained a follower, or even a 
reader, for more than thirty years. 

Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788, at Dantzic, where his 
father was a respectable and wealthy merchant, and his mother a 
most prolific writer of third-rate novels, which obtained consider¬ 
able popularity in Germany, though they had no reputation else¬ 
where. During his youth, he resided for several years both in 
France and in England, and there obtained the intimate knowl¬ 
edge of the literature of both these countries by which he was 
afterwards distinguished. Part of his university course was spent 
at Gottingen, where the lectures of Schulze, author of the “ JEne- 
sidemus,” awakened his taste for metaphysics. By Schulze’s 
advice, he first applied himself exclusively to Plato and Kant, 
whom he ever afterwards acknowledged as his masters, while he 
slighted Aristotle and Spinoza, then much studied in Germany. 
In 1811, he removed to Berlin, attracted by the lectures of Fichte, 
whose course he followed, though he soon learned to regard the 
Wissenschaftslehre with derision and contempt. The war inter¬ 
rupting his studies at Berlin, he finally took his degree at Jena, 
where he offered as his academic thesis the very able dissertation, 
which he afterwards published, on the Fourfold Root of the Prin¬ 
ciple of Sufficient Reason. A sketch of the doctrine of this essay 
has already been given in the chapter on Freewill. He then 
spent four years in Dresden, and, at two different periods, five 
years in Italy, seeking relaxation from metaphysical pursuits in the 
study of art and Italian literature. As his circumstances were 
easy, his perceptions quick, and his memory good, he was enabled 
to gratify his tastes to their full extent; and he certainly quali¬ 
fied himself for literary and philosophical pursuits by a broad and 
accomplished culture. Perhaps the consciousness of his superior¬ 
ity to most of his countrymen in this respect fostered his natural 
arrogance and superciliousness. As he was never married, and a 
permanent quarrel separated him from his mother and sister, the 
only surviving members of his father’s family, the want of domestic 
ties dried up his affections, and, when united with his lack of suc¬ 
cess in establishing his fame as a metaphysician, made him the re¬ 
sentful and misanthropic being which he remained till his death in 
1860. A reason for his abstaining from matrimony may be found 
in his remark, worthy of Rochefoucauld, for it shows as much wit 
as selfishness, that “ in our monogamistic part of the world, for 
any one to marry is to halve his rights, and to double his duties.” 


B92 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


No one ever suspected Schopenhauer of any wish to do either 
He does not seem ever to have had a friend, and till within five 
years of his death, he had found but one ardent disciple. Frauen- 
stadt, the editor of his literary remains, was this one ; and as he 
was a thorough sycophant, one cannot pity him much, though he 
appears to have been bullied without stint by the object of his fer¬ 
vent admiration, the merciless Schopenhauer. 

As he led a solitary and unhappy life, it is not strange that he 
became extremely suspicious and irritable; but we are surprised 
to learn that he was also of a cowardly temperament, and was per¬ 
petually anxious and fear-stricken before imaginary dangers. He 
was wont to keep his money in the strangest places of conceal¬ 
ment, and if roused by any sudden noise at night, he immediately 
grasped dagger and pistols, which he always had near at hand. 
While yet a student at the University, he was haunted by the fear 
that he was consumptive, and by the dread of being forced into 
military service. He was driven from Naples by apprehension of 
small-pox, and from Berlin by the appearance of Asiatic cholera. 
While at Verona, he was made miserable by a fixed idea that he 
had taken poisoned snuff; and he was afterwards harassed by con¬ 
stant fears of the loss of his property, and by the attack upon his 
inheritance made by his own mother. In one instance, produced 
by his own irritability of temper, his apprehensions of losing 
money by a lawsuit proved to be well founded. While he occu¬ 
pied furnished lodgings in Berlin, an acquaintance of his landlady 
caused him some annoyance, and he pushed her not very gently 
out of doors. In the scuffle she fell, broke her right drm, and was 
partially disabled for labor. She sued him for damages, was suc¬ 
cessful, and the court sentenced him to pay her an annuity for 
life. Unfortunately for him, she had a good constitution and 
lived long, so that he was compelled to bear this burden over 
twenty years. At last, he joyfully wrote in his diary, obit anus , 
obit onus. I should not enter into these details respecting his life 
and character, if they were not in some measure a key to his phi¬ 
losophy, if they did not furnish a sufficient reason for his earnest 
and persistent advocacy of pessimism. 

In 1819, at the age of thirty, Schopenhauer published his prin¬ 
cipal metaphysical work, that of which all his other books, which 
are somewhat numerous, are mere amplifications, illustrations, and 
defences, — “ Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.” As soon as he 
had put the manuscript into the hands of the publisher, he hurried 
off to Italy, chuckling over the sensation which he expected it to 


ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 


393 


create by its novel and startling doctrines, the brilliancy of its 
style, and the ridicule and abuse which it heaped upon those who 
had been for over twenty years the demigods of German idolatry in 
philosophy. And in any other country than Germany, in France 
or England, for instance, I doubt not that it would have created an 
unexampled sensation ; that men would have looked with mingled 
admiration and dismay upou the avatar of this portentous spirit, 
and that a controversy would have sprung up which would have 
made its author one of the most noted men of his time. But in 
Germany, though the especial home of metaphysics, it was far oth¬ 
erwise. After remaining three years in Italy, Schopenhauer re¬ 
turned home eager to learn what the world said of his book; and 
he found that the world paid no attention to it whatever. Only 
one notice of it had appeared in any of the critical journals, it 
had not found a single adversary, and probably not one person had 
read it through. And the neglect continued. Just a quarter of a 
century was still to elapse before it attained even the poor honor 
of a second edition; and not till 1859, when its author was in his 
seventy-second year, did it issue a third time from the press. And 
this, too, in a country where editions were multiplying every year 
of the principal writings, not only of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, 
but of their third and fourth rate commentators, disciples, and op¬ 
ponents. Schopenhauer’s rage and mortification were unbounded; 
and I must admit that he had good cause to be angry. But like 
the old woman" who was ducked by the mob for Jacobitism, but 
who persisted, at every momentary interval when she could get 
her mouth out of water, in crying out “Charlie yet! ” so Schopen¬ 
hauer obstinately continued to write and publish, as if only to 
manifest his hatred and contempt for the noted trio of German 
metaphysicians, and the stupid tribe of university professors of 
philosophy, teachers, and editors of critical journals, who made a 
continuous pother about their respective systems in a technical jar¬ 
gon, of which no one, who was not “ to the manor born ” could 
understand one syllable. 

The fact was, that hardly anybody in Germany, at that time, 
read metaphysics, or wrote about them in literary journals, except 
students, theologians, and professors, who were mostly congregated 
in the numerous universities, and who had become so accustomed 
to the barbarous patois of philosophical technicalities, which Kant, 
Fichte, and Hegel had invented and rendered fashionable, that 
they could not express their thoughts in any other dialect, nor be¬ 
lieve that anybody was a philosopher who could not pronounce 


394 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


their shibboleth. These formed a poor clique of pedants, who al¬ 
most justified Schopenhauer’s contempt for them. They had mis¬ 
taken the mastery of an abstruse and barbarous terminology for 
proof of metaphysical power, acumen, and erudition. When, 
among the world outside, there appeared a book which expressed 
disdain for this jargon, heaped abuse upon the authors of it and 
their systems, and also preached new and startling doctrines, these 
professorlings and their disciples affected cool contempt and ig¬ 
nored it altogether;—just as a competent mathematician would 
do, if an outsider should make a vehement assault upon the “ Me- 
canique Celeste ” of Laplace, though his language showed total 
ignorance of the technicalities of the infinitesimal Calculus, and 
even of the names of the common trigonometric functions. They 
forgot the just and striking remark of D’Alembert, that a good 
book on metaphysics cannot teach the world anything which is 
really new, but can only bring out into clearer consciousness, and 
in due order and system, what everybody knew before. He only 
is a competent teacher of philosophy, who can not only make him¬ 
self understood by all the world, but is willing to accept all the 
world as well-qualified judges of the truth or falsity of his opin¬ 
ions. 

Let us now attempt to understand and appreciate the system of 
philosophy put forth in this long neglected work, which has at last 
become notorious, and even popular. The two leading doctrines 
of Schopenhauer’s philosophy are sufficiently indicated in the brief 
title of his book. First, it is a system of thorough-going idealism. 
“ The world is my Presentation ” or mental picture, — is what I 
represent or believe it to be; it agrees exactly with my thought; 
it is my thought. The World exists for me only as a picture and 
a belief existent in my mind, only so far as it is portrayed by my 
thought and present to my consciousness. Schopenhauer prefers 
to call it, as Kant did, a Presentation, a Vorstellung, or placing 
before my mind, of certain phenomena or appearances. It is im¬ 
possible, and even inconceivable, that it should be known to be 
anything else than it appears to be ; and of course, an appearance 
is, from its very nature, an appearance only to the mind of the be¬ 
holder. Make this mental picture as vivid or lifelike as you 
please; it is still only a mental picture. Whatever the ignorant 
may fancy, or the superstitious may dream, nothing is known to be 
behind it. It is only an appearance or Presentation. “ He only 
is a philosopher,” says Schopenhauer, “ to whom this is distinct 
and certain, — that he knows no sun, and no earth; but is, only 


SCHOPENHAUER’S PRESENTATION THEORY. 


395 


and always, an eye that sees the sun, and a hand that feels the 
earth; and that the world which surrounds him is only a Presen¬ 
tation in his mind, — that is, exists only in reference to the person 
who thinks or represents it; and this person is himself.” It is 
impossible that anything should be known, except as it is con¬ 
sciously known, or in other words, as it is present to conscious¬ 
ness ; and nothing but an affection of or a Presentation to the 
mind can be present to consciousness. 

This world as Presentation has two essential, necessary, and in¬ 
divisible halves or factors : the one is the Subject knowing, and 
the other is the Object known. These are not two separate enti¬ 
ties, as former philosophers have foolishly imagined, one or the 
other existing as Cause, and the Presentation as Effect. Subject 
and Object are not related to each other as Cause and Effect. 
The Subject does not produce or create the Object, as the Idealist 
supposes ; neither does the Object create the Subject, as the Ma¬ 
terialist supposes. But as I have said, the two are inseparable, 
being only the different aspects of one and the same phenomenon, 
namely, the Presentation. The Object is an Object only to the 
Subject; the Subject is a Subject only to the Object. In other 
words, a thing cannot be known without a knower; and there 
cannot be a knower without something known. Then they are 
indivisible and indistinguishable from the Presentation, being only 
that Presentation itself viewed on its two opposite sides ; just as 
convexity and concavity are the two necessary aspects of one and 
the same curved line, being only that line viewed from one side 
or the other. Just so there is no Object known apart from the 
Presentation of it; neither is there any Subject knowing apart 
from the mental picture presenting the Object known. In one 
word, Subject and Object are both merged in the Presentation, 
which is both what appears, and that to which it appears. 

It can easily be shown that the existence of an Object without 
a Subject, that is, of any material thing or any physical event out¬ 
side of consciousness, and without any mind to behold it, is an 
arbitrary hypothesis; for such an existence is not even a.phenome¬ 
nal fact; it does not even “ appear to be ; ” and therefore real be¬ 
ing, or actual existence, cannot reasonably be predicated of it. In 
like manner, argues Schopenhauer, the existence of a Subject with¬ 
out an Object, that is, of a mind without anything presented to it, 
is an equally indefensible hypothesis. As I cannot be conscious, 
unless I am conscious of something, t. e., of some Object, a Subject 
without an Object would be a mind without consciousness, the ex- 


396 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


istence of which is not merely an arbitrary supposition, but one 
destitute of any proper meaning. A Subject cannot be presented 
to consciousness, for what is so presented ceases to be Subject, the 
very fact of presentation making it an Object. Hence, because 
not presented, it does not even u appear to be,” so that it is absurd 
to suppose that it really exists. The conclusion is, therefore, that 
we have no experience whatever of the existence either of mind 
or matter; experience teaches us nothing whatever but the exist¬ 
ence of Presentations. Hence, the world is my Presentation. 
And as this is true of the Present, it is, so to speak, still more ob¬ 
viously true both of the Past and Future ; for they, confessedly, 
exist only in my thought, as my Presentations; at the present 
moment, as all admit, both are non-existent. 

A more sweeping system of Idealism than this can hardly be 
imagined. But for the other and better half of Schopenhauer’s 
doctrine, the World as Will, which will be considered hereafter, it 
would be thoroughgoing Nihilism. But the theory as thus far 
expounded certainly seems to invite this criticism or parody. Any 
pair of correlative terms may thus be made to annihilate each 
other. For instance: a husband is a husband only in relation to 
his wife, for, without her, he would not be a husband, or would 
not exist as such. In like manner, the wife is a wife only in re¬ 
lation to her husband; for, without him, she would not be a wife, 
that is, she would not exist. Then neither exists as a person or 
thing in-itself; but all which really exists is the ground of the re¬ 
lation between the two, or the abstract idea of Matrimony. This 
is not merely a parody of the system; but it is a corollary, a le¬ 
gitimate, though ludicrous, application of it to a particular case, 
as Schopenhauer himself would acknowledge. For since his the¬ 
ory annihilates not only the Object known, but the Subject know¬ 
ing, he actually maintains the unreality, the non-existence, not 
only of the outward universe, but of all individual minds. He 
leaves nothing really existing but the one Presentation, or mental 
picture, which is present at any one moment, and only for that 
moment, to consciousness; for, he declares, this is the single fact 
attested by experience ; and he stoutly affirms that his system is a 
philosophy of experience. Like Hume, he annihilates both mat¬ 
ter and mind, asserting that one distinct perception, or mental im¬ 
age, is the only actually existing thing, and that no real connec¬ 
tion can be perceived between any two of these images existing 
at successive moments, or at wider intervals. This doctrine ought 
to be called the Presentation philosophy. 


SCHOPENHAUER’S PRESENTATION THEORY. 


397 


It should be mentioned, that it is only the post-Kantian meta¬ 
physics, or the so-called Philosophies of the Absolute, that Scho¬ 
penhauer treats with unmitigated censure and contempt. He pro¬ 
fesses to be a faithful, though discriminating, disciple of Kant 
himself, declaring that his own system is built exclusively upon 
Kantian foundations, and only carries out to their legitimate con¬ 
sequences the principles developed in the “ Critique of Pure Rea¬ 
son.” Far the ablest, most searching, and, on the whole, most 
sensible criticism of Kantian metaphysics which has yet appeared in 
Germany, is contained in the first volume of “Die Welt als Wille 
und Vorstellung.” He adopts unreservedly from Kant the doctrines 
of the uureality or subjective character of Space and Time, and 
that the Categories are mere forms of our Understanding or think¬ 
ing faculty, so that they have no validity outside of their application 
to the 'phenomenal world. But he reduces the number of the Cate¬ 
gories from twelve to one, that of Cause and Effect; and very 
properly ridicules Kant for his pedantic and almost childish love 
of symmetry, in tracing the analogy between Logic and Meta¬ 
physics so far as to set up just a dozen of them, divided into 
four equal tables, for no earthly reason but that of causing the 
number to coincide with that of the Forms of Pure Judgment. 
Schopenhauer will not admit, as Kant does, that there is any 
special faculty of the Unconditioned, whose only office is to con¬ 
duct us to illusion and error. Schopenhauer’s psychology, or di¬ 
vision of the faculties of the mind, I think, is more judicious than 
that of Kant. He makes Reason to be the faculty of Concepts, or 
abstract general ideas ; and Understanding to be the faculty of 
Cause and Effect, just as Sinnlichkeit (external or internal Sense) 
is the faculty of Time and Space. In other words, Reason appre¬ 
hends the relations of an individual thing to its class, its Concept, 
or abstract general notion; Understanding discerns the relations 
of individual things to each other as Causes and Effects ; while 
the Sense perceives these things in their relations to Time and 
Space. All abstract general knowledge comes from the Reason, 
which is peculiar to man ; Understanding is common to him and 
the brutes. Cognition of the relation of Cause to Effect is the 
one and only function of the Understanding; and a dog appre¬ 
hends this relation as perfectly as man does. For the Under¬ 
standing has no power of generalization, but its functions are con¬ 
fined to single objects immediately known; and the man who 
knows that a mutton chop will satisfy his hunger, has no advantage 
over a horse, who practically affirms the same thing of a bundle 


398 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of hay. Practical cleverness, ingenuity, and most of the helps fo* 
“ getting on in the world,” depend on acuteness of Understanding • 
and the want of these qualities is what we usually term “ stupid¬ 
ity.” Inability to generalize quickly and correctly is what we 
call want of Reason, narrow-mindedness, lack of philosophical 
breadth and power. 

But I go back to the general theory of Schopenhauer, which is 
evidently confirmed and illustrated by this Kantian doctrine of the 
purely subjective character, and consequent unreality, of Time, 
Space, and the law of Causation. As on the rising of the sun 
the visible world begins to be, so the Understanding at one stride, 
through its single function, converts the dumb meaningless Sensa¬ 
tions into perceptions of outward objects and events, giving to the 
former an imaginary locality in unreal Space, and to the latter a 
supposititious position or date in unreal Time. What the eye, the 
ear, the hand feels, these are not perceptions; they are only data 
for perception. First when the Understanding, in the exercise of 
its single function, passes over from the Sensation, as an Effect, to 
its supposed Cause in an external thing, does the world begin to be, 
as a perception spread out in Space, changing in regard to its 
form aud attributes, but persistent through all time in respect to 
its Matter ; for it unites Space and Time in the Presentation of 
Matter, that is, of actuality, actual existence, or that which acts. 
Matter is only a determinate portion of Space invested with 
Causality, or the power to act in Time, as in its supposed attributes 
of impenetrability, attraction, and repulsion. Hence we cannot 
conceive of Matter being either created or annihilated, that is, of 
its quantity being either increased or diminished; for the constit¬ 
uent elements of Matter, namely, Time, Space, and "Causation, 
being necessary Forms of the mind, exist indestructibly in the 
mind, and can neither begin to be nor pass away. This world is a 
Presentation only through the necessary forms of the Understand¬ 
ing and the faculty of Sense, and only for the Understanding and 
the Sense ; that is, through the laws of Cause and Effect, ar.d 
those of Space and Time. 

Time, Space, and Causality are forms, each of only one class of 
Presentations; Time of what is Internal, Space of what is Exter¬ 
nal, Causality, or Force, of Matter. But the falling apart into the 
two factors, Subject and Object, is a Form common to all Presen¬ 
tations, and belongs to their v6ry nature. Indeed, pure Time and 
Space, not occupied by objects or events, are mere blanks ; they 
cannot as such be perceived by Sense nor constructed by the Im- 


SCHOPENHAUER’S PRESENTATION THEORY. 


399 


agination. Only so far as they are occupied by Matter, do they 
become perceptible and imaginable; hence, Matter may be defined 
to be the manifestation or objectivity of Space and Time ; and of 
course, it is as unreal as they are. 

Still further: Time and Space are not only conditions of all 
reality, so that, without them, no real existence is possible, but 
they are principia individuationis, principles of individual exis¬ 
tence, without which no separate or concrete being is possible. 
Except as viewed under these universal forms of Sense, all that 
now appears as particular, concrete, and individual being, would be 
merged in the universal, and would be indistinguishable from that 
which is both one and all, the Presentation. This thing can be 
distinguished from that thing, only as this occupies a different place 
from that, or occupies the same place at a different time. The 
past and the future can be distinguished from the present, only as 
the two former exist at different times from the indivisible moment 
which constitutes the present. Time may be compared to a cir¬ 
cular disk perpetually revolving in a vertical plane, of which the 
always rising half is the future, and the always sinking half is the 
past. The tangential point where these two halves meet, which 
point is stationary and does not revolve with the rest, is the pres¬ 
ent. Or Time may be compared to an ever flowing stream, which 
forever breaks upon a rock in the midst of it, but does not move 
forward this rock, this being the nunc stans. We may imagine, 
indeed, that this tangential point is continually shiftiug; but so 
far as we know, it persists as one and the same ; it is that which 
is always Present. Take away these grounds of distinction, as in 
the doctrine that Time and Space are mere Forms of the percip¬ 
ient mind, and there are no this and that, no past or future, no 
you and I; but only an indivisible and universal Object, an indivis¬ 
ible and universal present, and an indivisible and universal knowing 
Subject. The history of the world, as well as its complexity and 
multiplicity, fades away into nothingness. Of the two necessary 
and indivisible halves, which make up the world as Presentation, the 
one is Object, whose forms are Time and Space, and through them, 
Multiplicity; and the other is Subject, which has neither Form, — 
which does not occupy Space, nor exist in Time, and is absolutely 
one and indivisible. 

That which knows all, and is known by none, not even by it¬ 
self, is Subject. It is, then, the bearer or supporter of the World; 
for whatever exists, exists only for the Subject. As this Subject 
every one finds himself; yet only so far as he is the kuower, never 


400 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


as being the object known. His body, indeed, is Object, — one 
Object among other Objects, a part of the world ; although it is 
his immediate Object, and not, like other parts of the world, or 
foreign matter, remote or mediate Object. Like all other objects 
of intuition, a man’s own body appears to him in Space and Time, 
which are the Forms of all cognition, and through which alone 
anything appears as manifold or complex. But the Subject is not 
manifested under these Forms, but rather is presupposed by them ; 
therefore, strictly speaking, neither multiplicity, nor its opposite, 
unity, belongs to it. We never know it, but it is that which 
knows all, whenever anything is known; like the eye, which sees 
every thing else, but never sees itself. There is one thing which 
never appears to me as a cognizable or complex phenomenon, or, 
indeed, under any Form whatsoever; and that is Myself. Every 
thing which belongs, or can belong, to the World, is inevitably 
burdened with this condition, that as it can be known only by the 
Subject, it exists only for the Subject. As there would be no light 
in the world, if there were no eye to see it, as there would be no 
sound, if there were no ear to hear it, for light and sound are only 
sensations in the mind, so there would be no World, if there were 
no Subject to know it; for Time, Space, and Causation, which 
alone constitute the World, and render it possible, exist only, in the 
Subject, aud are Forms of its cognition. Esse=percipi; existence 
and perceptibility are convertible terms. This is not denying the 
existence of Matter, which would be lunacy, but only correcting 
the popular notion of it. 

Though perception takes place by means of the law of Causal¬ 
ity,— that is, I can perceive nothing external except through 
affirming that there must be some Cause of my sensations, — the re¬ 
lation between Subject and Object is by no means a relation be¬ 
tween Cause and Effect, but is rather, as I have said, only like the 
relation between the convexity and concavity of any curved line, 
the twofold aspect of one indivisible thing, the Presentation or 
mental picture. The relation of Cause and Effect exists only 
between Objects ; primarily, between the immediate Object, t. e., 
my own body, and other Objects foreign to it; and secondarily, 
between those foreign Objects themselves. Analyze the action of 
any of the senses, and you will always find it is the action of some 
other body on some part of my body, as on the retina or the 
tympanum; never the action of body on mind. Hence, the old 
contest of the Realists and Idealists, whether body is the cause of 
mental action, or mental action the cause of body, is foolish and 


SCHOPENHAUER’S PRESENTATION THEORY. 


401 


meaningless. Neither is Cause; neither is Effect. The law of 
Causation, like the forms of Space and Time, belongs only to the 
convex side of the curve, to the objective aspect of the Presenta¬ 
tion, and to the relations of these Objects to each other as inown ; 
never to the concave side, or to the Subject which knows , but 
never is known, not even to itself, and so cannot be regarded under 
any laws or forms, simply because it cannot be “ regarded ” or 
known at all. That is not its office or function. 

As Schopenhauer’s philosophy thus largely depends on the sub¬ 
jective origin, exclusively empirical applicability, and consequent 
unreality, or transcendental idealism, of Time, Space, and Causality, 
he fortifies Kant’s arguments in support of this doctrine by some 
very original and striking ones of his own. The law of causation, 
he says, cannot be derived from any external experience, for 
without it, as we should not know that there was any external 
world, no external experience would be possible. We cannot 
prove the existence of an outward universe except by applying the 
law of Causality, and saying that there must be a Cause of our 
sensations. But then we cannot make use of that universe in 
order to prove that our sensations must have a Cause; for this 
would be reasoning in a circle, first proving A by B, and then 
proving B by A. The law of Causality, then, is a mere necessity 
of mind or thought, to enable us to think that there is an external 
world. And when it has enabled us so to think, it has performed 
its office ; it can do nothing more. Again, this very application of 
the law presupposes an a priori intuition of Space and Time. 
For Causation here means the necessary antecedence of one phys¬ 
ical event, as Cause, before another physical event, as its Effect. 
Such antecedence and consequence are possible only in Time, and 
such events can happen only in Space. 

The subjectivity of Time and Space is thus further illustrated. 
They cannot be anything, because they cannot do anything. Time 
is never a Cause, but only a Condition, of any phenomenon; only 
an atmosphere, so to speak, in which any physical Cause must be 
coflceived to act. Action is motion, and motion can take place 
only in Time and Space; but Time and Space alone, taken either 
separately or in combination with each other, cannot produce mo¬ 
tion or rest, cannot change either into the other. This is what 
the physicist calls the law of Inertia. A body once in motion will, 
if no physical cause intervenes, continue in motion in a straight 
line forever ; the lapse of Time during its motion, though it he bil¬ 
lions of years, and the quantity of Space which it traverses, though 
26 


402 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


it be billions of leagues, will not affect or alter its motion in the 
slightest degree. And so, also, if once at rest, it will forever be 
at rest. But the quantum, the relative amount, of Time and Space 
if they were anything real or actually existent, would necessarily 
have some effect, would exert some influence. Time, Schopen¬ 
hauer says very prettily, flies over things, but leaves no trace upon 
them. It is not Time which corrodes every thing that is perish¬ 
able, covers the rock with moss, draws wrinkles in the cheek, and 
eats away the river bank or the mountain side; but only Causes 
operative in Time. Shut off anything from the action of these 
chemical and other physical influences, as the Siberian mammoth 
was when enclosed in ice for geological ages, or as a fly is in am¬ 
ber, and it will remain absolutely unaltered forever. And as Time 
and Space produce no change in other things, so they suffer no 
change in themselves. They are equally indifferent to the pres¬ 
ence or the absence of phenomena, of real objects or events, in 
them. The clock may stop, the earth may stand still in its orbit, 
all motion of things may cease, things themselves may be annihi¬ 
lated, leaving only a void Space; but Time still rolls on in its 
perfectly uniform lapse, and the void Space endures immovable for¬ 
ever. We cannot even conceive or think, that the one should ever 
rest from its motion, or the other ever move from its rest. In our 
apprehension, at least, these two things limit, or set bounds to, 
Omnipotence; for we cannot think that even Almighty power can 
change them. 

O % 

These two things, also, are everywhere present and coexistent. 
Space exists throughout all Time, and Time is present at every 
point of Space. Wherever we go, even in imagination, these two 
inevitably go along with us. Now, in every other case, whatever 
thus persistently accompanies us, — say, a particular odor, — mov¬ 
ing wherever we go and resting wherever we stop, we immediately 
suspect that it comes from our own body, that it emanates from 
ourselves. The ringing which I always and everywhere hear, 
must be in my own ears, or rather in my mind, where alone a sen¬ 
sation can be felt. If a blood-red image of the sun should con¬ 
stantly float before my eyes at the same distance, whichever way 
I turn my head, and wherever I go, then I immediately know that 
it is of subjective origin, that there is no real outward object cor- 
respondii g to it, but that my own sense of sight is seriously af¬ 
fected. Why not reason in the same manner respecting Time and 
Space, which beset me so persistently that I cannot rid myself of 
them even in imagination or thought? They haunt me. Then 


SCHOPENHAUER: THE WORLD AS WILL. 


403 


they are products of my thought, laws of my perceptive faculty, 
spectral sights and spectral sounds, which originate, and have their 
only being, in myself. That my head appears constantly to be in 
Time and Space, ought to prove to me that Time and Space are 
only in my head. That you resist this conclusion only shows that 
you are unwilling or reluctant to accept it; for I defy you to pro¬ 
duce a single valid argument against it. But that infinite or end¬ 
less Space, says Schopenhauer, Space at once immovable and inde¬ 
structible, should exist in itself, independently of us, absolutely 
and objectively, and a mere image or representation of it should 
come into our minds through our eyes and other senses, is the 
most absurd of all fantasies; and yet, in a .certain sense, it is the 
most fruitful of all imaginings; for he who distinctly sees its ab¬ 
surdity thereby recognizes the purely phenomenal existence of this 
world, and sees it in its true character, as a mere phantasm of the 
brain, which perishes with the thinking Subject who entertains it. 

Having sufficiently considered “the World as Presentation,” 
which is the first half of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, we now pass 
to the second half, “ the World as Will.” The repugnance and 
unwillingness, he says, with which every one regards this truth, the 
World is my Presentation, that is, is merely a phenomenon or base¬ 
less image appearing in my mind, prove that this is a one-sided 
doctrine, or only half of the truth ; and that we must search for the 
other moiety. For the question immediately occurs, Why should 
there be any such phenomenon ? Why do we have this particular 
Presentation of the World as it now appears, rather than any 
other, say, of a World very differently constituted from the present 
one ? Philosophy as well as common sense affirms the dictum of 
Leibnitz, that nothing exists without a Sufficient Reason for its ex¬ 
istence. We must be able to tell why this rather than that, or we 
leave the matter short. Pressed by this difficulty, Kant, whose 
system, since he denies the reality both of Space and Time, is 
quite as idealistic as that of Fichte or Hume, found himself com¬ 
pelled to assert the existence of a ding an sich, — a real entity 
lying behind the phenomenon as its Ground or Reason, and 
thereby imparting to it its distinctive character. But as Schopen¬ 
hauer remarks, this is the Achilles’ heel, the vulnerable point of 
Kantian metaphysics; for it is a mere assumption, an acknowl¬ 
edgment of the difficulty, but not a removal of it. Kant is 
obliged to confess, in conformity with his own principles, that we 
do not know, and never can know, what this ding an sich is, or 
Wherein it differs from the phenomenon. Its existence is af- 


404 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


firmed, not for any independent reasons or grounds of its own, 
but only to meet the exigency of the case; and as nothing else is 
said about it, except that it is utterly incognizable, to affirm its 
reality is only to admit that such an exigency exists. The doc¬ 
trine that the Unknown and Unknowable is the Reason for any¬ 
thing, is simply a confession of ignorance, that we do not know 
what the Reason is, though there must be such a Reason. Let us 
see, then, whether the direct testimony of consciousness will not 
give us some indication of what this real entity is. 

If, says Schopenhauer, the inquirer himself were only a pure 
knowing Subject, — for instance, a winged head without a body, 
like one of the Cherubim, — then he could not find a way over, 
from a mere Presentation of the world in his mind, to a world of 
reality lying behind or underneath it, as its Ground or Reason. 
But it is not so. Man is not merely a knowing, but a willing , 
Subject; for he has not merely cognitions, but volitions, aversions, 
desires, and other manifestations of Will; and, what is more, he 
has a sentient body, his own nervous organism, which is the only 
immediate Object of his consciousness, all other phenomenal things 
being mediate Objects, since they are known to him merely 
through their action on his own body, and therefore through its 
intervention as a medium. The inquirer finds that he is himself 
an individual corporeal being, and, as such, that he is a part of this 
phenomeual world, and rooted in it, his own body being that 
through whose affections and sensations alone he can have any per¬ 
ception of all the other phenomena that lie around him. To the 
pure knowing Subject as such, it is true, its own body is itself a 
Presentation like every other, one Object among other Objects; 
and in so far, its movements, its actions, are known to him just as 
the changes of all other perceptible Objects are known to him, and 
would be just as strange and incomprehensible to him as they are, 
if their significance were not unriddled to him in a wholly differ¬ 
ent way. But this his own body is manifested to him in two en¬ 
tirely different modes : first, as one’Object among other Objects in 
an intelligible perception, and thus subject to the laws of percep¬ 
tion ; and secondly, as that conscious force or power, immediately 
known to every one, which is designated by the word Will. His 
volitions, or the acts of Will, are not, in themselves, mere phenom¬ 
ena or presentations, for the very reason that they are inward 
acts, which point forwards to some embodiment or manifestation of 
themselves in outward phenomena, and not merely backwards to 
some hidden Cause, Ground, or Reason, of which they are only a 


SCHOPENHAUER: THE WORLD AS WILL. 


405 


phenomenal expression. They certify their own verity, their own 
substantial and independent character. As to have a sensation, is 
to know that this sensation exists, so to have a volition, is to know 
that this volition exists; for it is our own act, and not merely an 
image or presentation of something beyond itself. It is known 
immediately , and as such, since it is the expression of our own 
inmost being. True, it immediately passes into an outward mani¬ 
festation of itself, which then becomes the Object of a presentation. 
Every true act of my Will, says Schopenhauer, is so far, and in¬ 
fallibly, also a movement of my body. I cannot really will the 
act, without at the same time perceiving that the volition appears 
as a movement of my body. If I will to raise my arm, or clinch 
my fingers, at once the arm appears raised, and the fingers 
clinched. If I will to stand, to walk, or to sit, immediately my 
body appears to me standing, walking, or sitting. In like manner, 
also, every effect produced upon my body from without, as when I 
am struck, or warmed, or chilled, or vibrations reach the tym¬ 
panum of my ear, or odors excite my olfactory nerves, — all these, 
in so far as they affect my body, immediately affect my Will, being 
called pleasurable, when they harmonize with the Will, and pain¬ 
ful or unpleasant, when they are opposed to the Will, or are repu¬ 
diated by it. It is a great mistake to regard pain and pleasure, 
hope and fear, and the like, as mere Presentations or images in 
the mind. They are not so by any means ; for they have no Ob¬ 
ject distinct from themselves, of which they could be a Presenta¬ 
tion ; and it is not possible that they should be unreal or imagi¬ 
nary. They must be what they are felt to be, for tbeir very essence 
consists in being felt. They exist in the very act through which 
they are felt to exist. They are a momentary and enforced will¬ 
ing or unwilling, acceptance or repudiation, of the impression made 
upon the Will. As the movements and actions of my body ex¬ 
press and render visible my conscious volitions, so my limbs, 
muscles, and other organs, even my whole body, express and make 
manifest to Sense my unconscious volitions; they are the embodi¬ 
ment of the incessant activity of my Will. 

I am conscious of the foreign outer world only once, as my Pre¬ 
sentation ; but I am doubly conscious of my own body, first as 
states of it express my volitions and my feelings, and secondly, as 
a mental Presentation of these states. In general, then, my whole 
body is nothing else than my objectified Will; that is, my Will 
become a Presentation or perception. Body and Will are one and 
the same thing, though given to us in two different ways. The 


406 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Will is, in a certain sense, the a priori cognition of the Body ; 
and the Body is the a posteriori cognition of the Will. Here, and 
here only, we penetrate immediately and consciously to the Ground 
or Reason of the Presentation, to the ding an sich, the Will, which 
lies behind or beneath the phenomenon, and imparts to it its dis¬ 
tinctive character, as this appearance rather than that, because 
so willed. 

Now, because our corporeal being is thus given to ourselves in a 
double manner, immediately and mediately, internally and exter¬ 
nally, first, in our immediate consciousness of Will objectifying itself 
in outward phenomena, and secondly, as these phenomena repre¬ 
sented in our cognitive sense as one Object among other Objects, 
the former being the natura naturans, and the latter the natura 
naturata, — because of this twofold cognition, I say, it becomes 
possible for us to make our internal self-cognition a key to the 
knowledge of the universal ding an sich, the true Ground or Es¬ 
sence of all external things. Will, says Schopenhauer, is not one 
form or species of the genus Power or Force, but each and every 
Power or Force is one species of the genus Will. Will is not 
necessarily self-conscious, or known to itself as such; in the 
greater number of cases, we infer, what in several cases we di¬ 
rectly know, that it is unconscious. Self-consciousness, knowledge 
as such, is only an accident of the manifestation of Will in animals, 
particularly in man ; but it is not an invariable accompaniment of 
it even in him. In all frequently repeated series of actions, which 
have become easy and familiar by long practice, as in walking, 
riding, writing, winking, and many others, we are not conscious of 
the hundredth part of our volitions. Then there is an unconscious 
and incognitive Will in Nature, — a Will not accompanied by in¬ 
tellect, a universal, all-pervading Will, which is the true Ground or 
Reason of all phenomena, of all that appears. In the last analysis, 
Matter is nothing but Force, and Force is nothing but Will. 
Matter is only the visibility or Objectivation of Will; it is Will 
become apparent as a phenomenon or Presentation; and the 
powers of Matter are identical with the Will in us. And this 
Will is everywhere one and the same, a blind and unconscious 
God, coinciding in this respect with the one universal Substance of 
Spinoza. It manifests itself, indeed, to our perception, in a count¬ 
less multitude of forms, and in particular concrete cases, as the im¬ 
penetrability, gravitation, cohesion, attraction, and repulsion of 
brute or inorganic matter; as the life and principle of growth, the 
nisus formations (hildungstrieh ), of plants and animals ; and even 


SCHOPENHAUER: THE WORLD AS WILL. 


407 


as conscious and cognitive Will, in man and brute. But as we 
have seen, the particular and the individual are only phenomenal 
manifestations of the universal,—mere accidents of the subjective 
Forms of Space and Time. What is thus manifested is only the 
universal all-pervading Will objectified, or become perceptible as 
Presentation. It is the nature of this one Will thus to manifest 
itself, in various stages of development or objectivation, as Matter 
and Life. And it so objectifies itself necessarily , one form suc¬ 
ceeding another, impulse preceding motion, thought following sen¬ 
sation, volitions succeeding motives, life and death coming after 
each other in ceaseless interchange, — all being governed or neces¬ 
sitated by the immutable law of Reason and Consequence, which 
is the universal Form under which all phenomena must present 
themselves to the Understanding. Thus, the world or Universe, 
which, in one of its aspects, is mere Presentation, on its other side, 
as a noumenon or thing-in-itself, is pure universal Will. The man¬ 
ner in which a volition announces itself in us, as a stretching out 
of the hand to take hold of some object, is only a particular sort 
of Will, namely, that which is directed by a motive towards a cer¬ 
tain act; and this act is therefore called a voluntary one, in distinc¬ 
tion from those which are involuntary or unintentional. But there 
is another sort of Will, on which motives, as perceived by the under¬ 
standing, have no influence, but which manifests itself as a Force 
acting under what we call mechanical, chemical, and physiological 
laws, — as in the fall of a stone, in chemical actions and reactions, 
in the assimilation of food, and in the growth of plants and animals. 
But these various kinds of Will, or Force, as most of them are usu¬ 
ally called, are only different stages of manifestation, or, as Scho¬ 
penhauer prefers to say, various degrees of objectivation, of one and 
the same Will, which, in its innermost essence, is always identical 
with itself. The leading feature of the theory is, the entire separa¬ 
tion of the Will, as such, from any mode of cognition or conscious¬ 
ness. The intellect, by which, in man, and even, to some extent, in 
brutes, the Will is guided, is, as Schopenhauer attempts to prove, 
itself only a product or creation of the Will, in the highest state of 
its manifestation. That which, in the lowest degree of its objectiva-^ 
tion, shows itself in Nature only as a blind Force, when it has 
worked its way up to the animal kingdom, appears in a body 
provided with organs of sense and a brain, and now for the first 
time becomes self-illumined, so that it is able to will with con¬ 
sciousness. Then Will alone is primary and essential, while Knowl¬ 
edge is secondary, artificial, and accidental. What is eternal and 


408 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


indestructible in man, says Schopenhauer, is, not the soul, but that 
which, to use a chemical expression, is the basis of the soul; and 
that is Will. The so-called soul is a compound, a union of Will 
with vows or Intellect, the latter being^a mere adjunct and im¬ 
plement of the former. 

Spinoza says, that a stone flying through the air from an im¬ 
pulse which it has received, if it had consciousness, would suppose 
that it was thus flying from its own will. “ I have only to add,” 
says Schopenhauer, “ that the stone would be right. What the 
impulse is for the stone, the motive is for me. What appears in 
the stone as cohesion, weight, and impenetrability, is, in its inter¬ 
nal essence, the same which I know in myself as Will; and which 
the stone too, if it had intellect and consciousness, would recognize 
as Will.” Spinoza, in this remark, had his attention fixed on the 
necessity, which he rightfully held to belong to the two cases. 
As the flight of the stone is the necessary result of its physical 
properties and of the impulse which it has received, so any volun¬ 
tary act of man is the inevitable consequence of his character, and 
of the motive which is present to his mind. The only dif¬ 
ference between the two cases is, that in the stone, Will has its 
lowest, and in man its highest, stage of visibility and objectiveness. 
Even St. Augustine recognized with keen insight this sameness 
with our Will in the tendencies and strivings of all things. He 
speaks of the weight of bodies as their love or appetite, whether 
they tend downwards by gravity, or upwards by levity; “for as 
the body by its weight, so the mind by its love or desire, is car¬ 
ried whithersoever it listeth. If we were stones, or waves, or 
wind, or flame, or anything of the kind, and so were without any 
sense or life, still we should not be without some appetite or long¬ 
ing each for our own proper place and order.” And Euler also 
saw that the essence of gravitation must finally be referred to “ a 
sort of inclination or desire ” of each particle of matter toward 
every other particle. So two ships in a dead calm at sea, though 
they may have been several furlongs apart when first the wind 
fell, inevitably tend, strive, and gravitate toward each other, and 
soon, if no hindrance arises, come to float side by side with their 
yards interlocked. 

Here is the nucleus of a great truth, which Schopenhauer clearly 
discerned and fully incorporated into his system ; and which, when 
stripped of the unnecessary, and even meaningless, adjuncts that he 
has heaped up around it, seems to me the noblest and most truth¬ 
ful solution which can be given of the great problem that philos- 


SCHOPENHAUER: THE WORLD AS WILL. 


409 


ophy has to solve. Matter is nothing bat Force, Force is nothing 
but Will. Every phenomenon, every object that appears to our 
senses, and every change that takes place in the universe, is but 
the manifestation of the one Infinite Will, that first brought the ( 
universe into being, when He first made it present to the conscious¬ 
ness of man as a living soul. Man is the earliest work of crea¬ 
tion, for whose moral improvement alone the outer world was fash¬ 
ioned and spread out in the eternal thought of God, where alone 

can be spiritually discerned in its true essence. Give up the 
hallucination, that our volitions are necessarily determined by mo¬ 
tives, and recognize the human Will as finally emancipated, and 
rejoicing in the consciousness of its Freedom, when the chain of 
physical causation is broken at every link, and the material uni¬ 
verse becomes only a Presentation in human minds of the infinite 
goodness and wisdom of their Creator. Give up also the senseless 
pantheistic doctrine, which resolves the particular and concrete 
into the universal, and thereby absorbs man into God, and recog¬ 
nize, as the first dictum of consciousness, that I exist, as a separate 
and responsible, though not independent, being, and, as the first 
lesson of philosophy, that God also exists as my creator, benefactor, 
and judge. 

“Certainly,” says Schopenhauer, “ Malebranche is right. Any 
physical antecedent is merely the Occasional Cause of the event 
which follows; it only marks the occasion for the appearance now 
and here of that one and indivisible Will, which is the essence, the 
inmost being, of all things. This whole visible world consists only 
of the successive manifestations, the objectivation in one phenome¬ 
non after another, of that one Will. The physical cause merely 
determines, (or enables us to know beforehand, through the uniform¬ 
ity of physical law,) the particular place and the particular time at 
which the event may be expected to occur ; but it is not that which 
generates the event, or makes it happen. This producing Force is 
the essence and internal nature of all things; it is the one univer¬ 
sal Will, which creates and sustains all, and of which the visible 
world is only a mirror, only a manifestation to sense. Therefore, 
what we call ‘ cause ’ is only the Occasional Cause.” Fas est ab 
hoste doceri ; either Malebranche or Berkeley might have accepted 
this, as a full and explicit statement of the doctrine which they in¬ 
culcated with so much earnestness, — that of the immediate presence 
and agency of the Deity throughout the physical universe, every 
motion or change in it, with the single exception of human voli¬ 
tions, being produced directly by His omnipresent and omniscient 
Will. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


Arthur Schopenhauer. II. — Pessimism, .Esthetics, and 

Ethics. 

The remainder of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is less satisfactory 
in itself, and less creditable to its author, than the doctrines thus 
far noticed. Yery curious is his depreciation of the Intellect, in 
order to exalt the Will as the primary and essential thing, not 
only in nature as a whole, but in individual minds. As there can 
be no Object without a Subject, he argues, so there can be no 
Subject without an Object; that is, no act of knowing, without 
something different from it, which is known. Hence, a Conscious¬ 
ness which should be pure intellect, and nothing more, would be 
impossible. The intellect is like the sun, which does not illuminate 
space if there be not some object there to throw back its beams. 
As that which knows, it cannot, as such, be known ; but the only 
thing in self-consciousness which is really known is the Will. For, 
not only willing and determining in the narrowest sense, but also 
all striving, wishing, flying, hoping, fearing, loving, hating, — in 
short, all that immediately constitutes our proper weal and woe, 
pleasure and pain, — all this is an excitement or modification of 
Willing or Repudiating; — is that which, if it works outwardly, 
appears as an act of the Will. And all this we know thoroughly; 
in truth, it is the only part of ourselves which is known. 

Now, in all knowledge, the first and essential thing is the 
known, not the knowing; since the former is the real thing, the 
prototype ; while the latter is only the image in the mirror, the 
presentation, the ectype. Therefore, in self-consciousness also, 
what is known, that is, the Will, is the first and essential; but the 
knowing of it is the secondary, what is added, the mirror. The 
two are related to each other as self-luminous bodies are to reflect¬ 
ing ones, or as the vibrating string is to the sounding board, the tone 
or sound from which is the consciousness. In order to know con¬ 
sciousness thoroughly, we must first ask what that is which is 
equally and constantly present in every consciousness, since this 


SCHOPENHAUER: .ESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


411 


must be the common and essential element of it. That which 
merely distinguishes one consciousness from another is the acci¬ 
dental element of it, the merely additional or secondary. 

Consciousness belongs exclusively to animal life, so that the 
phrase “animal consciousness” would be tautological. Now, what 
is present in every animal consciousness, even in the weakest and 
most incomplete, and which lies at the bottom of it, is the imme¬ 
diate being aware of a desire, and the gratification or disappoint¬ 
ment of this desire in different degrees. This we somehow know 
a priori. It is the common feeling, that which makes us sympa* 
thize with each other, and even with brutes. Wonderfully differ¬ 
ent as the numerous sorts of animals are, however strange one of 
a new species among them, never before seen, may be, we still as¬ 
sume at once, and with confidence, that its innermost essence is 
perfectly well known to us; — that is, we know that the animal 
wills ; we even know what it wills, namely, existence, gratification 
or well-being, freedom from pain, life, and the propagation of its 
species. Herein we assume its entire identity with ourselves, and 
do not hesitate to attribute to it all those modifications of the Will 
which we are conscious of in ourselves. We speak of its desires, 
aversions, fear, anger, hate, love, joy, sorrow, longing, etc. But 
as soon as the phenomena of mere Intellect come into question, 
we doubt. We dare not say that the animal comprehends, thinks, 
judges, knows. But willing and not-willing, or repudiating, are 
common to man and the polyp. All actions and gestures of ani¬ 
mals which express affections of the Will, we understand, and in 
some measure sympathize with, because our Will is like theirs, and 
at bottom is even identical with it. The great gulf between us 
and them is the Intellect. This is a mere implement for the ser¬ 
vice of the Will, to discover the means of satisfying its desires and 
providing for its wants; and the Intellect, together with its organ, 
the brain, is more complicated in proportion to the greater de¬ 
mands of this service. The organism also corresponds to the ani¬ 
mal’s wants, that is, to its Will ; and according as it has horns, 
teeth, wings, hoof, claw, or hand, it has a more or less developed 
brain, whose function is the intelligence required for the use of 
these organs. Thus, both the structure of the animal, and its In¬ 
tellect or peculiar instincts, are at once the manifestation and the 
ministers of its Will. The more complicated the organization, the 
more numerous are its wants and desires, and the more developed 
vhe Intellect which is needed to supply them. Man is the most 
somplicated of all; he needs most, he wills most, and therefore 


412 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


has most Intellect. And still the real man himself is not the In¬ 
tellect, but the Character — what he wills, and how he wills it, 
as with more or less energy and persistence. 

As we have seen, all individualization is a mere outcome of 
Space and Time, which are subjective Forms of the perceptive 
faculty, and therefore have no real being in themselves. All 
which depends upon them, then, is mere Presentation ; the par¬ 
ticular and individual are only manifestations of the one universal 
Will, spectral images on the shadowy background of Space and 
Time. Just so, one human face, that of an orator, for instance, 
who is addressing a large assemblage of persons, all of whom are 
looking at him, is reflected and multiplied in thousands of images 
of itself painted on the retinas of each beholder. These images, 
though numerically distinct from each other, and all seemingly 
alive and glowing with the expression of thought, are in fact only 
ideal multiplications to the Sense of the one reality at the centre. 
Will primarily objectifies itself in general ideas, in genera and 
species; these are the only permanent forms of the world as Will. 
Individuals rise and pass away; they are mere fleeting phenom¬ 
ena ; Nature heeds them not, but reserves all her care for the con¬ 
tinuance of the species. To this end, the seeds of life are multi¬ 
plied with measureless profusion; life and death succeed each 
other in ceaseless interchange; but the alternation is only phenom¬ 
enal, for all life at bottom is one, and is the objectivation of Will. 
The Will to live, of which Life, or the World, is the phenomenal 
expression, is a mere pleonasm for the Will. Even individual 
organisms, as material, are rapidly fleeting forms, subsisting only 
by a constant process of decay and restoration. Life and death, 
also, are but higher forms of assimilation and excretion, of taking 
on and putting off life; they are only reproductions, or successive 
manifestations, of the one universal life or Will. We ought no 
more to grieve at death, than at the loss of the matter which is 
constantly passing away from our bodies. The matter is ever 
changing; the form is persistent. Individuals perish, the species 
endures. It is just as absurd to embalm bodies, as carefully to 
preserve our excrements. That individual man should fear to die, 
is as foolish as if the sun should fear to set, forgetting that what 
appears as dipping beneath the horizon, is merely passing on un¬ 
diminished to illuminate another hemisphere. Death is a sleep in 
which one’s individuality, it is true, is forgotten ; every thing else 
awakes again, or rather, has always remained awake. 

Schopenhauer makes a striking application of this doctrine in 


SCHOPENHAUER : AESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


413 


his theory of ethics, where he bases upon it the only sort of retri¬ 
bution which his system admits as possible. Whatever injury I 
do to you, I suffer it; for you and I are one and the same being, 
or rather we are only different expressions of one and the same 
Will. He who injures another is only a wild beast who fastens 
his fangs in his own flesh ; for the slayer and his victim, the vic¬ 
tim and his avenger, are one; and the World is itself its own 
great tribunal of retributive justice. Every misfortune, pain, or 
disappointment which can befall a man, comes upon him with strict 
justice, because it is his own act; the one universal Will, which 
constitutes and governs the world and life, is also his own Will, 
and he has no individual being independent of it. In every act 
and every occurrence, the agent and the patient are one and the 
same; and thus eternal justice reigns. Could all the misery of 
the world be put into one scale, and all the guilt of the world into 
the other, the balance would remain exactly even, inclining neither 
way. If we would know what men are worth, on an average, in 
amoral point of view,— that is, what they deserve, — we have 
ouly to observe what their lot is, or what they have to undergo, in 
this world. This is want, sorrow, misery, pain, and death. If the 
human race, taken as a whole, were not so unworthy, so bad, their 
fate, taken as a whole, would not be so mournful. 

We are thus brought to what is the crowning and most charac¬ 
teristic feature of Schopenhauer’s system. Alone, so far as I know, 
among all ancient or modern philosophers, he is an avowed, con¬ 
sistent, and thorough-going Pessimist. To him, this is the worst 
of all possible worlds, tenanted by the worst of all possible beings, 
mankind. We have already had a sketch of the Optimism of 
Leibnitz, with which, indeed, most readers are familiar, as it was 
paraphrased by Pope, and ridiculed by Bayle and Voltaire. The 
caricature of it by the latter, in the story of Candide, is held by 
many to be the wittiest and ablest of all his philosophical writings. 
But not in the half-jesting, half-earnest manner of Bayle, not in 
the mocking and sarcastic spirit of Voltaire, not even with the dog¬ 
matic and overweening insolence of Hobbes, does the German 
Pessimist undertake to prove that this world is a hell, and that the 
men who tenant it are demons. Schopenhauer’s tone is fierce, 
acrimonious, and denunciatory. He is a misanthrope, one who has 
quarrelled with the world, and hates all his fellow beings, not, as 
Timon of Athens did, because they had at first fawned upon, and 
then injured and forsook him, but because he was by natural dispo¬ 
sition what Dr. Johnson called “a good hater.” For we cannot 


414 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


attribute his disgust with the world to the ill reception, or rather 
the utter neglect, which his writings had experienced ; since his 
avowal of Pessimism was bold and uncompromising in the first and 
ablest of his works, that for which he unquestionably anticipated 
a great success. His tone, moreover, is not that of mortified van¬ 
ity, but is acrid, bitter, and vituperative. His doctrine is an effu¬ 
sion of spleen, which has no better source than a bad temper and 
an ill-regulated intellect. He is witty and eloquent, indeed, in his 
denunciation of the woes that afflict humanity, and the misdeeds 
which have merited them. But these are natural qualities of the 
man and his style, which, as I have sufficiently shown, never fails 
to be lively and vigorous on any theme. But on this subject, the 
hatefulness of this world, his wit is turned to gall, and his eloquence 
only makes the picture more gloomy and untruthful. 

The link of connection which binds his Pessimism to the other 
leading doctrines of his philosophy is ingeniously contrived. Ac¬ 
cording to his theory, as we have seen, the Will is the ding an sich , 
the sole real existence, of which all phenomena are only the mani¬ 
festation. Now what is Will ? It is a constant striving, a never 
satisfied desire, a reaching forward to something which it has not 
and never can have, because the attainment of its object would be 
its own annihilation as Will; it would then will no longer, for it 
would possess what it had willed. Because Will is life and all 
things, and cannot cease to will without ceasing to be, therefore 
the essence of life is unsatisfied purpose, a striving to be what we 
are not, and to gain what we have not; and the fruit of life is 
disappointment and sorrow, the end whereof is death. The only 
possible virtues, then, are pity — pity for all other beings who are 
as wretched as we are; resignation or submission to the inevitable 
ills of life; and self-abnegation, or a renunciation of the Will to 
live, which is a virtual return to nothingness, — the only heaven 
which Schopenhauer admits as possible ; and even this is possible 
only in thought, or as a Presentation, since the universal and un¬ 
conscious Will, of which my individual existence is but a transi¬ 
tory phenomenon, must persist or endure, because its essence is 
indestructible. As one desire is chastised or perishes, another in¬ 
evitably rises; for we must will even to cease to will, or, as its 
equivalent, to cease to be. The hindrance which, in any case, pre¬ 
vents the accomplishment of our desire, we call Sorrow, the frustra¬ 
tion of hope, failure, or at best the postponement of happiness. 

* Man never is, but always to be blest.” 

“ Victuros agimus semper, nec vivimus unquam." 


SCHOPENHAUER : AESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


415 


But these sorrows, failures, or postponements constitute our life ; 
for without these, we could not will, and therefore we should cease 
to be. We spend our life in striving to avert or postpone death, 
an effort which is sure to be at last a failure. Death is, not happi¬ 
ness, but the end, for us, of pain, toil, and sorrow. And death (for 
us, again,' for our individual existence,) is annihilation; since the 
dead do not will. If we knocked at the graves, and asked the 
dead in them whether they wished to come back to earth, they 
would all shake their heads. Even the much desired immortality 
of the soul, as it is always the hope of “ a better world,” is a sure 
sign that the present world is not worth much. In truth, what we 
dread, and seek to postpone, is not so much death, considered merely 
in itself, or in its consequence, as a mere stage of non-existence, 
but simply the act of dying. No one regrets his own non-exist¬ 
ence during the eternity which preceded his birth ; and non-exist¬ 
ence during a subsequent eternity will not concern him, since 
he will not be conscious of it. The only use of looking forward 
to it, even for him to whom it is gloomy, is to sadden the present 
moment with an irrational and unsatisfied Will to live. In general, 
both the Past and the Future are nothing to us, since the one is 
irretrievably gone, and the other is not yet. Both are confessedly 
mere Presentations, or images of what is not, since this is the na¬ 
ture of memory and anticipation. All that really is, is the present 
moment; and all that actually occupies this moment, is a desire, an 
unsatisfied longing, a Will. Now, as all the happiness, or rather 
the freedom from sorrow, which we ever have enjoyed, or hope to 
enjoy, belongs either to the past or future, this also is a mere Pre¬ 
sentation, an unreal image, to which nothing now corresponds. 
Our view of existence, therefore, says Schopenhauer, is but an im¬ 
age or mental picture of a vast plain, on which there may be spots 
of sunlight, either behind or before us ; but there is one spot on 
it which always lies in shadow; and this is all that is real, the 
present moment. What mockery is it to say this is the best of 
worlds, in which the happiest man knows no more blessed moment 
than that of dropping asleep, and the most unhappy no more 
miserable one than that of waking up again ! 

Out of the night of unconsciousness, the Will finds itself wak¬ 
ened as an individual into life, into an eternal and unlimited world, 
fmong numberless other individuals, all striving, suffering, erring ; 
and, as if frightened by a horrid dream, it hastens back again into 
the old unconsciousness. Lessing wondered at the foresight and 
good sense shown by his son, who, because he thoroughly disliked 


416 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the appearance of this life, had to be drawn into it by force on the 
day of his birth; and was no sooner in the world than he made 
haste out of it again. Old age and death, to which we all are 
rapidly hastening, is a sentence of condemnation, passed by nature 
herself, upon the desire for life, as a blunder and a crime. “ What 
you willed,” it says, “ ends thus; then will something better.” 

“Then old age and experience, hand in hand, 

Lead him to death, and make him understand, 

After a search so painful and so long, 

That all his life he has been in the wrong.” 

These truths will appear more evident, says Schopenhauer, a3 
soon as we perceive that only suffering and sorrow are positive; 
what we call happiness is merely negative, the absence of pain. 
Thus, we feel pain, but not the absence of pain; we are conscious 
of trouble and anxiety, but not of freedom from them; — of dan¬ 
ger, but not of security. We are not even conscious of the three 
greatest goods of life,— youth, health, and freedom, — so long as 
they are in our grasp, but only when we have lost them; for these 
also are negations. We first observe that the days of our life were 
happy, when they have given place to unhappy days. 

“ Nessun maggior dolore, 

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
Nella miseria.” 

In proportion as enjoyments multiply, we lose our sensibility for 
them; for what is customary no longer gives pleasure. 

Ceaseless longing, unsatisfied desire, is but one form of the misery 
of life; the quick and easy fulfilment of all our wants introduces 
only another and worse form of suffering, the aching void of weari¬ 
ness and ennui, which renders life absolutely unbearable, and thus 
often leads to suicide. So our existence, like a pendulum, swings 
to and fro between pain and ennui; and this truth is strangely 
enounced in the fact, that after man had placed all sorrows and 
pains in hell, all that remained for his heaven was the weariness 
of nothing to do. Life is always threatened by a thousand various 
perils, and the utmost watchfulness is needed to escape them. With 
careful steps, and anxious circumspection, man follows his path, 
around which countless dangers and enemies lie in wait. So he 
travelled when he was a savage in the wilderness, and so he must 
walk even in civilized life, since there is for him no security. 

“ Qualibus in tenebris vitae, quantisque periclis, 

Degitur hocce aevi, quodcunque est.” 

The life of most men is only a perpetual struggle for existence, 


SCHOPENHAUER : ESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


417 


with the certainty of losing it at last. What makes them perse¬ 
vere in the miserable contest is, not so much a love of life, as the 
fear of Death, which yet stands as unavoidable in the background, 
and may enter at any moment. Life itself is a sea full of rocks 
and shoals, which man avoids only by the utmost care and watch¬ 
fulness, although he knows that, even if successful, with all his 
exertion and skill, in winding his way through them, he thereby 
only comes the nearer, with every foot of progress — yes, steers 
directly towards, the greatest and worst shipwreck of all — Death. 
This is the final object and termination of his sad voyage. If we 
reckon up, as far as possible, the sum of want, pain, and misery of 
every kind, which the sun illuminates in his course, we shall admit 
that it would have been much better, had it been as little able to 
evoke the phenomenon of life on the earth, as on the moon, and 
did the surface of the former, as of the latter, still find itself in a 
purely crystalline condition. We may conceive our life, indeed, as 
a short and uselessly interrupting episode in the boundless and 
blissful repose of Nothingness, as only a gross mystification, not to 
say, cheat. 

The World and Life, as they are here portrayed, thus burdened 
with crimes, sufferings, and death, are the manifestation of Will, 
exist only in and through the Will, and express its true character. 
All the pains and sorrows of this life, as we have seen, are strictly 
retributive, and therefore just; men are miserable, because they 
deserve to be so. He who, through his intellect, has arrived at a 
knowledge of this nature and essence of the world, has but one 
course remaining to him. It is to renounce the Will altogether, 
to cease striving after anything, to repudiate all desires, to sink 
into inaction and mere thought, and thereby, so far as in him lies, 
to reduce this life to the nothingness whence it was drawn, and 
which is heaven as compared with the miseries of this world. 
Hence, in the ethics of Schopenhauer, asceticism, celibacy, quietism, 
monachism, and the like, are the only virtuous modes of living; 
for they alone are consistent with resignation for one’s self and 
pity for others. If all would adopt this course, this world would 
immediately cease to be; for it exists only as Presentation, as a 
picture before the mind, and this is made continuous only through 
successive acts of the Will. This, he maintains, is the teaching 
even of Christianity, a system which, on other grounds, he utterly 
/ejects, as indeed he does all religion, except that of the Buddhists, 
which, according to him, denies the existence of a God. Through¬ 
out the New Testament, this world and the things of the world are 
27 


418 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the synonym of evil, and “he that hateth his life in this world ” is 
he that “ shall keep it unto life eternal.” He forgets the declara¬ 
tion of the Saviour, that “I am come a light into the world, that 
whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness; ” “ for I 
came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” 

And this suggests the only comment, which we really need to 
make, upon this monstrous system of Pessimism. It is, that these 
gloomy and misanthropic views of human life are held only by 
avowed skeptics, like Bayle, Hume, and Voltaire, or by open athe¬ 
ists, like Schopenhauer. Believers, such as Leibnitz, Barrow, 
Tucker, Paley, and others, either preach Optimism, or so great a 
preponderance of good over evil, even in this world, as amply to vin¬ 
dicate the goodness of its Creator. Be their opinion well-founded 
or not, it certainly casts sunshine on their pathway through life, 
while unbelief shrouds it in sorrow and darkness. The latter is a 
religion, if it can be so called, of gloom, misanthropy, and despair; 
and no more striking illustration of this fact can be found than in 
the philosophy, if it deserves that name, of the atheist Schopen¬ 
hauer. 

The fallacy in the initial argument of the Pessimist is easily 
pointed out. He holds that life consists in a series of Volitions, 
each one of which expresses a want, a privation, an unsatisfied 
desire, and therefore, is a constant sense of suffering and sorrow. 
On the contrary, Will, because it is the origin and spring of ac¬ 
tivity, is a perennial source of happiness; for energetic action, the 
strain of all the faculties, both of mind and body, in the pursuit of 
some object, is keen enjoyment. While it lasts, it is uninterrupted 
happiness. Effort is pleasurable in itself, irrespective of the end 
to which it is directed. Vigorous work quickly becomes play, and 
therefore, if it is not imposed upon us by any of the necessities of 
life, we voluntarily create occasions for it, by setting up trivial or 
imaginary objects to be pursued. We invent or imagine a goal, 
merely to have the pleasure of running a race. Schopenhauer 
would have us believe, that a fox-chase is misery, since it springs 
from a sense of privation and want, because the hunters have not 
yet caught the fox. The theory of the Pessimist is even ludicrously 
false; it is the morbid dream of one who has become soured with 
the world, because he has not cultivated his affections for others, 
nor his sense of duty to his country or his God, and so has allowed 
all his desires to terminate in Self. An energetic and persistent 
Will, constituting what is usually called force of character, because 
; t keeps all the faculties in vigorous action, is a source of happiness 


SCHOPENHAUER : AESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


419 


no less than of greatness. “ The intellect,” says Aristotle, “ is 
perfected not by knowledge, but by activity.” The teaching of the 
Stagirite on this subject is thus tersely summed up by Hamilton : 
“ We exist only as we energize; pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded 
energy ; energy is the means, by which our faculties are developed ; 
and a higher energy the end, which their development proposes. 
In action is thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement, 
and perfection of our being; and knowledge is only precious, as it 
may afford a stimulus to the exercise of our powers.” 

Pessimism is a natural outgrowth of Pantheism, or rather of the 
doctrine improperly so called, (since Pessimists, like Schopenhauer 
and Hartmann, are not theists.) which consists in maintaining that 
the whole human race must be regarded as one individual man, 
whose existence extends through all ages and over all parts of the 
earth, so that his single experience comprises all the woes and 
crimes, which, in fact, are widely distributed, and so, thinly scat¬ 
tered, among countless multitudes of human beings. But this is a 
baseless theory, which is confuted by the distinct testimony of con¬ 
sciousness, that my own existence, as a separate and individual 
being, is the highest of all certainties and the foundation of all 
other truth. Hence, it is an idle task, a fantastic and gloomy dream, 
to make out a catalogue of all the calamities and sufferings of 
which there is any mention in history, and thereby to imply that 
any one man’s life is darkened by the thought of them, or haunted 
by a dread of their recurrence. As I have elsewhere argued, it is 
a mere truism to say, that happiness or misery is experienced only 
by individuals ; that there is no such thing as suffering of the race 
in general; that no one person was ever distressed by a thousandth 
part of the woes thus enumerated; and that the occurrence even 
of any one of them would occupy only a small fraction of his whole 
experience of life, all the rest of which may have been spent in 
active and even joyous endeavor. Any one man’s share of the 
evils which are possible to humanity is always a small one. The 
human mind is too happily constituted to be plagued by shadows, 
by forebodings of infrequent and improbable calamities. It is 
sanguine ; it is much less prone to dream of future ills, than of 
coming pleasures. It does not, like the Pessimist, brood over the 
unhappiness of mankind. 

“ Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound ; 

All at her work the village maiden sings ; 

Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around, 

Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.” 


420 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


We come now to what is most striking and original, and least 
objectionable, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, — to his theory of 
aesthetics, explaining the nature of the sublime and beautiful, and 
the principles of art and taste. The Will, which is the primal 
force and inmost being of the phenomenal world, does not at once 
manifest itself in the fleeting forms of individual things. These 
are perishable, mere waves or ripples on the surface of the deep, 
which break or fall as soon as formed, constantly becoming, but 
never enduring, or really subsisting in themselves. The Will is 
first objectified in the species or genera of things, which persist or 
endure, being perpetually renewed by the ceaseless activity of the 
principle of life, though their separate members quickly pass away. 
Men die, but humanity lives ; one generation passeth away, but 
another generation cometh. What is constantly preserved is the 
Type of the class, the specific or generic form, that in the likeness 
of which every individual is created, though imperfectly expressing 
its ideal perfection. No one plant or animal, not even man, is a 
perfect representative of its class; all approximate, but none attain, 
the excellence of their type. This type is the Platonic Idea, the 
first and highest manifestation of the universal Will, because it does 
not exist either in Space or Time, and is therefore incapable of 
plurality, and knows neither beginning nor end. Of man in gen¬ 
eral, the Type of his species, neither multiplicity, beginning to be, 
nor ceasing to be, can be predicated; he belongs to no one place or 
time ; he is wherever and whenever individual men are possible; 
indeed, individual men are but his faint and shadowy ect^pes, his 
fleeting and imperfect representatives. Obviously, the Platonic 
Idea is the nearest approximation to the noumenon, the being per 
se, of Kant; for when he denies that either Time, Space, Causal¬ 
ity, or Substance, which are mere phenomenal Forms, can be pred¬ 
icated of the ding an sich, he in fact affirms of it just what Plato 
affirms of his Idea. Without Time or Space, it caunot be plural ; 
without Substance, it cannot be real; without Causality, it cannot 
have begun to be, or cease to be ; it is eternal, increate, immortal. 
To Schopenhauer, universal Will is the ding an sich, and the Pla¬ 
tonic Idea or typical form is only its first and highest manifesta¬ 
tion ; only a manifestation, I say, though the first and highest, be¬ 
cause, though free from all other phenomenal and subjective Forms 
of the intellect, it is still subject to this one, the most persistent 
of all, the distinction between Subject and Object. So long as it 
is consciously regarded by the mind as an Object of contemplation, 
distinct from the contemplating Subject, so long it exists only 


SCHOPENHAUER: ESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


421 


in relation to that Subject, and therefore is not pure being per se. 
But the man of genius and the true artist is capable, in his hap¬ 
pier moments, of rising above even this last Form of time and 
sense, and of losing his own individuality in ecstatic contempla¬ 
tion of the Idea, as embodied in a genuine work of art, or in the 
grander and more beautiful aspects of nature. So far as he has 
true aesthetic perception and taste, he no longer distinguishes him¬ 
self from the admired Object, but becomes absorbed into it, and 
identified with its essence. He forgets himself ; he ceases to will 
or desire anything; he is free from the miseries and sufferings of 
humanity, because no longer conscious of his separate existence. 
It makes no difference to him, whether it is from the window of a 
prison or a palace, that he beholds and admires a beautiful sunset. 
In fact, because he no longer wills to live, his individual life for 
this moment is at an end ; he is self-annihilated ; and self-annihi¬ 
lation is Schopenhauer’s blessedness, his only idea of heaven. And 
what the man of genius or the genuine artist habitually does, even 
common men are capable of doing at times, when stimulated by 
thoughts, sights, or sounds of unusual grandeur and beauty. They 
too forget themselves, when music entrances them, or poetry rouses 
their nobler feelings, or art introduces them into a new world. 
They become mere eye or ear, — that is, pure intellect without Will, 
or any disturbing passion; and then they identify themselves with 
nature, as conscious that one spirit animates both it and them, and 
are ready to exclaim with the poet,— 

“ Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part 
Of me and of my soul, as I of them ? ” 

This theory is well founded and striking; but the credit of orig¬ 
inating it is due to Kant, who first drew attention to the fact, that 
absolute disinterestedness, or an entire forgetfulness of self, is nec¬ 
essary before true aesthetic perception and emotion become possible. 
As soon as we begin to think of the relations of the object either 
to ourselves, or to other persons and things, as of its ownership, 
its desirableness, its utility, its fitness for certain ends, or even of 
its conformity to certain theories and rules of art, immediately our 
purely aesthetic enjoyment of it vanishes. The mind then becomes 
occupied with selfish or utilitarian computations, or even with an 
attempt to justify its admiration by abstract reasoning about the 
principles of taste; and we thus really become insensible to the 
beauty and sublimity which we profess to admire. Schopenhauer 
goes so far as to maintain, that if the object is thought in any of 


422 


MODERN PHHOSOPHT. 


its relations to things outside of itself, that is, as cause, effect, 
means, end, seed, blossom, or fruit, so far it ceases at once to afford 
any pleasure of a proper aesthetic character. Hence, as the sole 
function of the Understanding or logical faculty is to compare 
things with each other, and thereby to discern the relations be¬ 
tween them, it follows that this faculty is excluded altogether from 
the province of taste. Science, because it works through the un¬ 
derstanding and is occupied solely with relations, with comparison 
and induction, has nothing to do with aesthetics, but moves in a 
different atmosphere. The beautiful or the sublime is discerned 
by a process of immediate intuition, that is, by the mere contem¬ 
plation of things; no one can reason himself into a perception of 
them. Yet the faculty for their enjoyment is not a mere percep¬ 
tion of the sense, for it is not limited to what is external, but pene¬ 
trates to the typical Form, the manifestation of the pure Idea, which 
lies behind. 

In the aesthetic mode of viewing things, therefore, we find these 
two essential elements: 1. The knowledge of the object not as an 
individual or single thing, but as the Platonic Idea, that is, as the 
persistent Form, or Type, of this whole species of things. 2. The 
6elf-consciousnes8 of the spectator as no longer an individual, no 
longer a person, but as without Will, a pure knowing or intuiting 
Subject. The Object is contemplated out of its uses, and out of 
the forms of Space and Time. It is no longer dependent on either 
of the roots of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; we no longer 
ask after its Why or Wherefore, its ownership, whence it comes 
or whither it tends; we no longer demand the cause or the motive 
of its existence. It is all-sufficient in itself, and bare contempla¬ 
tion of it is its own exceeding rich reward. Such, to the lover of 
nature, is the dim forest, the sounding cataract, the ocean beach, 
or the snow-covered peak of the Alps; such, to the student of 
art, is the Last Supper of Da Yinci, the Parthenon, the Apollo 
Belvedere. Even the last phenomenal Form, the distinction be¬ 
tween Subject and Object, gradually fades away, and the two are 
melted into one. The spectator is no longer an anxious and care¬ 
worn personality, seeking what he has not, craving rest and hap¬ 
piness, and constantly disappointed. He no longer wills or wishes; 
he is absorbed in the Object, identified with it, and gives up his 
individual being. He is at one with Nature. 

The conditio sine qua non of the union of these two elements 
is the abandonment of that mode of knowledge which is directed 
by the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and which is serviceable only 


SCHOPENHAUER: ESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


423 


as a slave of the Will, and as a means for science. The pleasure 
which is excited by the contemplation of the beautiful proceeds 
from the union of these two elements, though now with more of 
one, now with more of the other constituent, according as the ob¬ 
ject of aesthetic admiration requires. All volition springs from 
some need or want, and therefore, according to Schopenhauer, 
from suffering. The fulfilment of the desire puts an end to this; 
but for one wish that is gratified, at least ten remain to plague us, 
as unsatisfied cravings. Moreover, desire continues long, and its 
demands reach to the infinite; while fulfilment is short, and is 
grudgingly imparted. Even the finite gratification is but a vain 
show ; the satisfied wish immediately gives place to a new one ; 
the former is an acknowledged error, the latter continues to de¬ 
ceive. No obtained object of desire can give permanent, never- 
fading joy, but is only like the alms thrown to a beggar ; it 
brightens his life to-day, merely in order to darken it on the mor¬ 
row, which brings no further boon, and is saddened by the con¬ 
trast. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is occupied by the 
Will, so long as we are constantly urged by desire, with its con¬ 
stant hoping and fearing, so long we are slaves to the Will, and 
there is for us no abiding happiness or rest. Whether we hunt or 
fly, fear evil or strive after good, it is essentially all the same; 
care for the always craving Will, in whatever form it shows itself, 
persistently occupies and agitates our consciousness; and without 
rest, no true well-being is possible. Thus the Subject that wills is 
stretched forever upon Ixion’s wheel; he is ever pouring into the 
sieve of the Danaides, is forever mocked like Tantalus. 

But when some external occasion or internal impulse suddenly 
lifts us up out of the never-ending flow of the Will, and tears 
away the cognitive faculty from its enslavement to desire, then the 
attention is no longer directed to the motives for volition, but the 
mind comprehends things out of their relation to the Will, and 
therefore considers them disinterestedly, without subjectivity, views 
them in their purely objective aspect, and is wholly given up to 

them, so far as they are mere Presentations, and not motives ; 

then, that peace of mind, first sought for, but always sought in 
vain, through the Will, or as an object of desire, now comes upon 
us at once, of its own accord, and all is completely well with us. 
This is the painless condition, which Epicurus praised as the high¬ 
est good, and believed to be the state of the gods. Then we are, 
for that moment only, released from the ignoble pressure of the 
Will; we keep the Sabbath from the penitentiary labor of the 
Will, and the wheel of Ixion stands still. 


424 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Science, because it is constantly seeking for the Reason of things, 
always asking Why, is occupied only with phenomena. On the 
other hand, Art, the offspring of Genius, beholds only the eternal 
Ideas, the essential and the permanent, lying above and behind the 
phenomena, which are only shadows. Art aims to impart these 
Ideas to others by expressing them in sensible forms, and according 
to the material on which it works, it is either plastic Art, Poetry, or 
Music. Some objects are so constituted, through their union of 
variety and multiplicity with order and distinctness, through the 
absence of harsh transitions, and the harmonious blending together 
of numerous parts into one uniform whole, that the Ideas which 
they symbolize are seen as if reflected in a pure and bright mir¬ 
ror ; they appear prominent and vivid, and need no effort to com¬ 
prehend them. Such objects are said to possess Beauty, because 
the mind of the beholder easily passes into the state of aesthetic 
contemplation of them, and is thereby filled with unselfish and 
spontaneous delight. It is pleased without a reason, it knows not 
wherefore. While the Beautiful thus prompts, invites, and facili¬ 
tates aesthetic emotion and insight, the Sublime forcibly arrests 
attention, reduces the passions and the Will to silence, and com¬ 
pels the observer to stand still and admire. Hence a feeling of 
awe or terror often heightens the impression of Sublimity, increas¬ 
ing the energy and violence with which it masters all other per¬ 
ceptions and appetites, and assumes exclusive dominion over the 
sdul. But if the emotion of terror is so much excited that the be¬ 
holder becomes alarmed for his personal safety, his individual Will 
is brought again into activity, and the feeling of Sublimity disap¬ 
pears, because it is merged in a selfish desire for self-preservation. 
Thus, as Lucretius reminds us, when we are in safety on the 
shore, it is pleasant to observe a storm impending over the ocean 
and bringing the hapless mariner into peril. But the approach¬ 
ing conflict with the winds and waves raises no emotion of Sublim¬ 
ity, and therefore imparts no pleasure, if we are in a frail bark, 
aud thus exposed to all the violence of the storm. 

Beauty softens and tranquillizes the mind, grandeur conquers and 
overwhelms it. But in either case, the intellect no longer searches 
or inquires; it loses sight of the relations of things to each other 
and to itself, and is absorbed in wonder and admiration. A 
person of lofty character produces the impression of Moral Sublim¬ 
ity, because we are forced to admire his entire forgetfulness of self 
and disregard of the ordinary selfish motives which prompt com¬ 
mon men to action. He never thinks of what will injure or prc- 


SCHOPENHAUER : ESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


425 


mote his own passions or interests, but contemplates men and 
things from an entirely objective point of view, with as little re¬ 
gard to what may affect himself as if he were beholding the in¬ 
habitants of a distant planet. It follows from this analysis, that 
what is simply alluring or attractive in the sense of exciting passion 
or desire, is the very opposite of the Beautiful. What often passes, 
though with persons of degraded taste, under the name of Art, is 
merely the luscious or licentious, which, because it feeds appetite 
or stimulates passion, is never typical or representative of an Idea, 
and so contributes to develop, instead of restraining, the disturbing 
consciousness. So, also, mere imitation, as in the lower forms of 
portrait-painting, because it is related solely to an individual form, 
without reference to any general idea or character impressed upon 
it, is petty, and however skilfully done, cannot awaken genuine 
aesthetic admiration. 

The Ethics of Schopenhauer are based upon a frank avowal of 
all the logical consequences of his doctrines of Fatalism, Pessim¬ 
ism, and Monism. An action, he says, can no more take place 
without a sufficient motive, than a stone can move without a suf¬ 
ficient thrust or pull; and when a motive is present which is 
strong enough to act upon the agent’s character, the action cannot 
fail to take place, if it is not prevented by a more powerful antag¬ 
onistic motive. Hence, it is idle to talk about a Categorical Im¬ 
perative, about what we ought to have done, since this implies a 
falsehood, namely, an assertion that we could have acted otherwise. 
“ In this theory of Ethics,” says Schopenhauer, “let no one expect 
to find any moral precepts, or any doctrine of duties; still less 
should he look for any universal precept for creating all virtuous 
actions. We shall speak neither of any unconditional obligation, 
nor of any law imposed on human freedom; since both of these 
phrases are self-contradictory. We shall say nothing of what 
ought to be ; for so one talks to children, and to nations in their 
childhood, but not to a people who have appropriated to them¬ 
selves all the culture of a civilized age. Indeed, there is an ob¬ 
vious contradiction in calling the Will free, and still prescribing 
laws to it, how it ought to will. ‘ Ought to will! ’ — that is. 
wooden iron.” 

And yet an action may properly be deemed either praiseworthy 
or blameable, according as it does, or does not, promote some val¬ 
uable end, or conduce to some beneficent result; and also, accord¬ 
ing as it is based upon a true or false theory respecting the nature 
of things, the constitution of the universe, and the relations of man 


426 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


to his fellow beings and to the other orders of animals. And 
what is the true theory in these respects, according to Schopen 
hauer ? It is, as we have seen, that All are One ; that all distinc 
tion of individuals is only phenomenal or apparent, being only 
presentations to my thought; that as Space and Time are unreal 
and have only subjective validity, so also all plurality or multi 
plicity, depending upon Space and Time as their principia indi- 
viduationis, are equally unreal, are mere shadows of the only ac¬ 
tual entity, which lies behind them, the one universal Will, with 
which my own Will is in truth coincident, being only one of its 
countless manifestations. 

As an immediate consequence of this doctrine of Monism, we 
have a theory of Right or Justice. He who recognizes all other 
men as coordinate manifestations of the same Will with himself, 
and who in fact regards them as identical with himself, will treat 
their interests as if they were his own, and will consider that in 
benefiting or injuring them, he thereby benefits or injures himself. 
In short, he will follow the golden rule: he will do to others 
whatsoever he wishes that they would do to him. He will be in 
harmony with the world; he will perceive that there is no divid¬ 
ing wall between others and himself. On the other hand, the bad 
man, blinded by the veil of Maja, and falsely regarding phenom¬ 
enal distinctions as real ones, will consider other persons to be 
forms of his Non-Ego, and therefore mere phantoms, while his 
own personality is the only real one in the universe. This is 
the essence of Egoism or selfishness. The true Egoist believes 
himself to be the sole reality, and therefore unhesitatingly appro¬ 
priates all goods to his own use, without any consideration for 
others, who are as nothing in his esteem. He is not necessarily 
malicious, or positively bad, since he does not harm others gratu¬ 
itously, but only when he may thereby procure some advantage 
for himself. 

The essence of Injustice, or Wrong, consists in carrying out in 
conduct the unfounded assumption that one’s own will can rightly 
make the wills of all other individuals subservient to it, since they 
are merely spectral presentations to his fancy. My own will af¬ 
firms and realizes itself in my own body, and all the powers inher¬ 
ent in that body may be fairly used by me for my own purposes. 
But the Egoism which belongs to human nature constantly tempts 
me to go so far in affirming my own will as practically to deny or 
transgress my neighbor’s will as expressed in his body, and thus 
to compel his powers also to serve my selfish ends. This infringe* 


SCHOPENHAUER : AESTHETICS AND ETHICS. 


427 


ment of the limits of another’s will, appearing in an attack made 
either by violence or fraud upon his person or his property, is 
what the world properly stigmatizes as Injustice; and the harm 
thereby done to the sufferer is enhanced by the peculiar mental 
pain which arises from a sense of Wrong endured. Justice, says 
Schopenhauer, is only negative, since it consists merely in refrain¬ 
ing from Injustice. The latter is the positive term, because it 
consists in active infringement, which is negation, of another’s 
right; while Justice simply abstains from so doing, or at most, acts 
only in order to ward off Injustice, and thereby denies or nega¬ 
tives a negation. The vehemence of the individual’s will is that 
which constantly tempts him to wrong-doing, since it blinds him to 
a perception of the truth, that by injuring another he is in fact 
injuring himself, because the assailant and the victim are really 
one. This truth, as we have already seen, is the basis of eternal 
Justice, which is necessarily retributive; and it is a vague forebod¬ 
ing, a sort of dim consciousness of it, which creates what is usu¬ 
ally called remorse of conscience. 

Still further; the wise man, recognizing the essential unity of all 
living beings and inanimate things, and therefore making no dis¬ 
tinction between others and himself, will be not only just, but piti¬ 
ful. As by harming any living thing he would really harm him¬ 
self, so his compassion for every sufferer, his pitying regard for 
any unfortunate man or animal, is only an expression of grief for 
the countless woes to which he is subject in his own person. All 
the miseries of human life are his own, and therefore by doing his 
best to alleviate them, he is really benefiting himself. We weep, 
says Schopenhauer, not on account of the pains which we are 
actually enduring at the moment, but because we are thinking 
over, we are repeating in imagination, the woes which we have 
endured, or to which we are looking forward. It is because our 
own woes, when pictured in fancy, seem more intolerable than 
when we first experienced them, that we are oftener moved to 
tears by others’ sufferings than by our own. And yet it is only 
60 far as imagination makes them our own, that we grieve for 
them. We weep for ourselves only when we find our own state 
so pitiable, that if we saw another person suffering the same ills, 
we are convinced that we should be full of compassion and of an 
active desire to aid him. Thus Petrarch admirably describes the 
reason why he wept: — 


428 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


“ I vo pensando: e nel pensar m’assale 
Una pieta si forte di me stesso, 

Che mi conduce spesso 

Ad alto lagrimar, ch’i non soleva.” 

The greatest excellence, however, of which human virtue is 
capable, is reached when pity for the countless miseries and wrongs 
of which this world is the theatre goes so far that one renounces 
altogether the exercise of Will, sinks back into pure inaction, and 
tranquilly beholds all existence fading out into nothingness. Life 
and the world, woful and pitiable as they are, are only the mani¬ 
festation of the Will to live, only the mirror in which the Will 
beholds itself in its true character; and since all plurality and dif¬ 
ference are merely phenomenal and unreal, that Will is my own, is 
myself. Throttle the monster, then ; chastise every passion; re¬ 
nounce every desire; cease to will; and thereby cause the lights 
to be extinguished, and the curtain to fall. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 


Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. 

Edward Yon Hartmann, the founder of the latest, and at 
present the most popular, Philosophy of the Absolute, is one of 
our contemporarie’s, as he was born in Berlin, February 23, 1842. 
His father was an officer of artillery in the army, but stationed 
permanently at Berlin, as the head of a commission for testing by 
experiment all pretended improvements in heavy firearms. Thus 
spared the necessity to which other army officers are subject, of 
being frequently shifted from one military station to another, his 
son’s education was carried on without any intermission or change 
of locality in the excellent public schools of the German capital, 
and Edward therefore boasts of being a genuine “ Berliner.” He 
was an only child, and as he thus had no young playmates within 
the family, and was quick-witted and precocious in mental develop¬ 
ment, he became rather prematurely old in his manners, habits of 
thought, and modes of expression, because his only associates at 
home were his parents or other persons of greater age than him¬ 
self. Even at school, as his precocity caused him to be jumped 
over the younger classes, he had but few boyish associates, and 
those considerably older than he was. He completed with distinc¬ 
tion, and at an unusually early age, the whole course preparatory 
to entering the University. But he had no liking for the ordin¬ 
ary academic studies, except mathematics, his favorite pursuits being 
music and drawing. Hence, and because he disliked excessively 
the coarse and almost brutal manners and amusements of the 
students, he decided not to enter the University, but to adopt his 
father’s profession. It is a curious fact, that neither of the two 
systems of German philosophy, which have become widely known 
and have found numerous disciples in our own day, is of Univer¬ 
sity origin; Schopenhauer was not a professor, Hartmann was not 
even a graduate. Before receiving a commission in the army, it 
was necessary to pass through one of the military schools, and 
Hartmann selected the school of artillery and engineering. Here, 


480 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


however, his studies were soon interrupted by chronic rheumatism 
in his lower limbs; and this malady was soon complicated by the 
crippling and tedious affection of water on the knee. The disease 
first appeared when he was only nineteen years old, and after 
prolonged but fruitless trial of all that the physicians and various 
mineral springs could do for him, he was compelled, at the age of 
twenty-three, to abandon his profession, in which he had already 
obtained the rank of first lieutenant, and resign himself to the 
gloomy prospect of being a cripple within doors for a long period, 
perhaps for life. In 1867, however, the malady reached its worst, 
and since that time, it is pleasant to learn that there are signs of 
steady though very gradual improvement. In a short autobio¬ 
graphical sketch, published in 1876, he writes cheerfully about 
himself, constant literary occupation, an accomplished and affection¬ 
ate wife, and a son two years old contributing much to the happi¬ 
ness of his home. Alluding to one of Hartmann’s fixed opinions 
in philosophy, an intimate friend of the family once laughingly re¬ 
marked, “ If you wish to see bright and contented faces, you must 
go among the Pessimists.” 

Among the occupations open even to an invalid confined to the 
house were those of music, painting, and poetry, for each of which 
he frankly confesses that he had much liking, though but little 
genius, and in each he made earnest trial of his productive power, 
though not to much purpose. He even published a poetical drama 
on the story of Tristan and Isolde, which did not meet a flattering 
reception. Then, renouncing effort where only failure was prob¬ 
able, to use his own phrase, he bravely threw the fine arts over¬ 
board, and in spite of earnest dissuasion by his father, he settled 
down to the strenuous amusement, which he had long had a hank¬ 
ering for, and somewhat practised, namely, a thorough course of 
metaphysical study and speculation. Without any instruction or 
sympathizing friends with whom to converse upon the subject, he 
eagerly read the published works of Hegel, Schelling, Schopen¬ 
hauer, Kuno Fischer, and many other renowned German thinkers. 
Near the end of the year 1864, at the age of twenty-two, he began 
to write “ The Philosophy of the Unconscious ; ” and in April, 
1867, this able work, a large octavo volume of over 800 closely 
printed pages, full of original speculation and subtle reasoning, 
and evincing a large acquaintance with the physical sciences in 
their principles and their latest theories and results, was completed 
and ready for the press. But the finished manuscript remained 
a full year lying in his desk, and it was only the accident of mak- 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 431 


ing the acquaintance, in 1868, of a competent and willing publisher, 
which prevented its author from complying with the advice of 
Horace, nonum prematur in annum. When published, the work 
had immediate and great success. Though its author was almost 
a boy in years, with no aid from previously earned reputation or 
high social position, without help from University cliques or from 
association with the managers of literary and scientific journals, 
who nowadays generally forestall public opinion, the book in eight 
years passed through seven successive editions, and raised a hail¬ 
storm of review articles and pamphlets. This remarkable success 
was fully deserved. Hartmann’s style, though not so brilliant as 
that of Schopenhauer, is clear, concise, and forcible, his learning 
ample, and his speculations often appear novel and ingenious, 
though the reader may dissent from the conclusions at which he 
ultimately arrives. He is a good psychologist and a shrewd ob¬ 
server of human nature; and he shows more practical judgment 
and a larger fund of common sense than are usually found in the 
writings of German metaphysicians. 

The Philosophy of the Unconscious is a great improvement 
upon the doctrine of Schopenhauer, though it is built in the main 
on the same foundations, and often seems to arrive at similar re¬ 
sults. But the qualifications of his predecessor’s opinions are 
numerous and important, and are generally such as to take away 
much of their offensive character, and to prepare them, perhaps 
after some farther modification, for general acceptance. Thus, he 
is nominally a Pessimist; but he also fully accepts and defends 
the doctrine of Leibnitz, that this is the best of all possible worlds, 
making this qualification, however, that though it is the best pos¬ 
sible, it is still so bad that it would be better for all of us if it did 
not exist at all. But Leibnitz also teaches the inevitable charac¬ 
ter of what he calls “ metaphysical evil,” which even omnipotence 
could no more obviate than it could create two mountains without 
a valley between them. At the worst, then, Hartmann only ex¬ 
aggerates the amount of this “ metaphysical evil; ” and therefore, 
I cannot see why he has not as good a right to be called an Opti¬ 
mist as either Leibnitz or Pope. In fact, his Pessimism appears 
rather speculative and theoretical in character, than earnest and 
profound. It is only his rhetorical presentation of the old diffi¬ 
culty, which all theologians feel the weight of, respecting the 
origin of evil. He is not a misanthrope, he has not a suspicious 
and gloomy temperament, and his experience of life has not been 
so unhappy as was that of Schopenhauer. Hence, if he should be 


432 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


entirely cured of the malady which has so long crippled him, and 
if his happy family should increase in number and contentment, 
his admirers may well hope to learn that he has abjured Pessimism 
as bravely as he has already renounced his inclination to dabble in 
poetry and the fine arts. 

Nominally, also, Hartmann holds atheistic opinions; and yet his 
philosophy so nearly coincides with the theism of Christianity, that 
in the sixth edition of his work, he found it expedient to insert an 
additional chapter, and a long and elaborate one, on “ the Unconsci¬ 
ous and the God of Theism,” in which he concedes and explains 
away so much, that his doctrine remains hardly distinguishable 
from the theology which is now often inculcated without offence in 
a Christian .pulpit. This acceptance of most of the conclusions 
of natural theology will appear sufficiently rbanifest in all that fol¬ 
lows. It is noticed here only in order to call attention to the 
weight of the testimony which is thus involuntarily rendered to 
the truth. Beginning, as he frankly avows, with a strong preju¬ 
dice against theism, attempting to build up a philosophy of human 
nature and of the phenomena of the universe which should nowhere 
require the existence of a God, the course of his investigations and 
his reasonings still brings him irresistibly near to the very conclu¬ 
sions which he sought to avoid. A little more earnestness of feel¬ 
ing, and some greater definiteness and warmth of moral purpose, 
would probably have opened his intellect to a full conviction of the 
truth. For the only disagreeable personal trait which one finds in 
his writings is the entire lack of enthusiasm, and a certain hard and 
dry manner which is so cold-blooded as to appear repulsive. 

The purpose of “ The Philosophy of the Unconscious,” as taught 
by Hartmann, is to prove that there is omnipresent in nature One 
Will and Intellect, acting unconsciously in inseparable union with 
each other, through whose agency all the phenomena of the uni¬ 
verse may be satisfactorily accounted for. He will not consent to 
worship this principle as Deity, though he declares that his name 
for it, “ the Unconscious,” is not merely a negative expression, sig¬ 
nifying the absence of consciousness, but that it has the very 
essential positive attributes of Will and Intellect, which neces¬ 
sarily act together, and are never divided from each other except 
in the mind of man, where first the phenomenon of Consciousness 
begins to appear, and where, consequently, Intellect may be eman¬ 
cipated from control by the Will, though even here Will must 
always be accompanied by intelligence. Even this partial divorce 
of the two psychical principles never takes place in “ the Un- 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 433 


conscious ; ” “ but all unconscious functions are exercised by One 
identical Subject, which has merely its phenomenal manifestation 
in a multitude of individuals ; so that ‘ the Unconscious ’ signifies 
this One absolute Subject.” 

Hartmann is a thorough-going Monist, therefore, after the man¬ 
ner of the Eleatics, maintaining the doctrine of ( AU-Einheit ) the 
essential Oneness of all things, so that his principle of “ the Un¬ 
conscious ” takes the place of Spinoza’s universal “ Substance,” of 
Fichte’s “ absolute Ego,” of Schelling’s “ absolute Subject-object,” 
of Hegel’s “ absolute Idea,” and of Schopenhauer’s “ Will.” But 
he differs from all these philosophers in his method , which :e not 
the usual one with metaphysicians, of deductive reasoning from ab¬ 
stract principles, nor yet of the spontaneous evolution of thought 
by a dialectic process. He adopts the method of the physical 
sciences, resting nearly his whole theory upon induction from ob¬ 
served facts. He builds in the main upon the common facts that 
are universally known, and upon the latest results obtained in the 
sciences of physics, biology, physiology, psychology, and history. 
Hence his work is by no means so abstruse and forbidding in 
character as are most metaphysical treatises. It is a vast reper¬ 
tory of. curious and interesting facts, collected from all the fields 
of science, stated with remarkable brevity and precision, and dove¬ 
tailed into the unity of theory and system by much ingenious argu¬ 
ment and speculation. In its way, the book is almost as attractive 
as the celebrated “ Origin of Species,” and owes its early popularity, 
probably, to the same causes which contributed so largely to Mr. 
Darwin’s great success. It is spiced with heretical doctrine, it be¬ 
trays the imagination and the insight of a poet quite as much as 
the profundity of a philosopher, and it brings together on one 
canvas the latest speculations of science and a multitude of de¬ 
tails, each one of which would interest even a school-boy. It is 
only after he has laid the broad foundations of his theory on in¬ 
ductive principles, and in the later portions of his work, that 
Hartmann rises into the pure but thin atmosphere, incapable of 
respiration by ordinary lungs, where metaphysics find their proper 
home, and where he certainly shows a power of fine analysis and 
subtle and abstruse reasoning, and a thorough knowledge of the 
history and the results of philosophy, which would do houor even 
to Hegel. 

As the first step towards proving the presence throughout nature 
of one Will and Intellect ( Wille und Vorstellung), distinct from 
what appears in the mind of man, he is obliged to analyze the idea 
23 


134 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of Purpose or Final Cause ( Zweck ), and to show that physiolog¬ 
ical and psychological processes, and indeed the phenomena of the 
universe generally, cannot be satisfactorily explained and accounted 
for except on the hypothesis that they were at first arranged, and 
are ever afterwards directed and kept in activity, by one govern¬ 
ing Purpose ; in other words, that they everywhere indicate intel¬ 
ligent Design. He argues rightly, that- the conception of Final 
Cause by no means excludes that of Efficient Cause, but rather 
presupposes it, and could not be carried out except through its coop¬ 
eration. If I am not able to bring about directly the End which I 
have in view, he says, I seek for some Means of accomplishing it 
indirectly; then, being myself an Efficient Cause, I will those 
Means, and thereby produce them ; and these Means thus realized, 
through their Efficient Causality, produce the End which I at first 
designed. The physicist is right, therefore, in maintaining that all 
events are produced by Efficient Causes ; but then these Efficient 
Causes may be selected, arranged, and directed by mind, by an 
intelligent Will, which seeks through them to carry out its own 
Purposes. Surely, an intelligent Will is one Efficient Cause 
among others ; volition counts for something in this world’s affairs. 
Even Mr. Darwin or Professor Huxley will admit as much as this ; 
since otherwise, he could not grasp a pen and write the words 
through which he would express his denial of it. We do not deny 
the Efficient Causation of the pen, the ink, and the fingers in writ¬ 
ing those words; and he cannot deny the Final Cause,the Purpose, 
which chose, combined, and governed those Efficient agencies. 
Thus, in maintaining that the structure of the human eye proves 
Design, Hartmann does not deny, but affirms, that many physical 
agencies — “ physical laws,” if you choose to call them so — must 
have cooperated in building up that complex and nicely arranged 
organ ; he only asserts that these would not have so cooperated 
harmoniously, if they had not been combined and directed by 
some intelligent Will for that very purpose. 

If a highly useful end — that of distinct vision, or hearing, for 
example — is brought about by a complex and intricate structure, 
like that of the human eye or ear, which we know to have been 
produced through the combined action of many distinct physio¬ 
logical laws operating on the only fit material, protoplasm, which 
is always made to be conveniently near at hand, then, Hartmann 
argues mathematically, from the Doctrine of Chances, that the 
probability is overwhelming in favor of the hypothesis that the 
many necessary arrangements were intentional, were effected by a 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 


435 


designing "Will, through which these laws were made to cooperate 
harmoniously so as to bring about the useful result. I have al¬ 
ready given an outline (see page 277) of this curious argument, 
which depends wholly on the mathematical principle, that when the 
concurrence of many distinct conditions is needed before a certain 
result becomes possible, the probability of such concurrence is as¬ 
certained by multiplying into each other successively the fractions 
denoting the probability of each of the conditions taken singly. 
Hence, as at least thirteen separate arrangements are required 
before the human eye can successfully do its work, the probability 
of a combination of all of them being effected in any other way 
than through the direction and agency of an intelligent, designing 
Cause, is expressed by so minute a fraction that it cannot be enter¬ 
tained for a moment by any sound mind. It is the probability, 
with thirteen dice in the box, of obtaining sixes from all of them 
at a single throw, through auy number of trials. We are morally 
certain that it could not be done. 

But this is not all. As Hartmann insists, the argument is still 
further cumulative. The eye is by no means the only organ in 
the human body depending on the combination of many nice ar¬ 
rangements. It is but one out of hundreds of similar instances, 
such as the ear, the hand, the respiratory apparatus, the heart, etc., 
the union of all of them being necessary for the continuous life 
and activity of the organism as a whole. Hence, the extremely 
minute fraction representing the probability of the eye alone being 
produced solely by a fortuitous combination of merely physical 
causes, must be raised at least to the one hundredth power, and 
thereby become almost too minute to admit of numerical expres¬ 
sion, before we obtain the probability of the Darwinian hypothesis 
being the true one, namely, that the whole human body might be 
so constructed, without supposing the process to be anywhere fore¬ 
seen, directed, and brought about by a designing Intellect and 

Will. 

Hartmann’s work is divided into three Books, the first of which 
brings together the evidence of unconscious mental action in the 
corporeal organism ; the second contains proofs of the activity of 
the Unconscious in the phenomena of the human mind; while the 
third presents what the author calls the Metaphysics of the Uncon¬ 
scious. He first directs attention to the independent or self-reg¬ 
ulating functions of the ganglia, or lower nervous centres, connected 
with the spinal cord and the sympathetic system. These, without 
auy communication with the brain, and therefore unconsciously. 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


436 

direct and maintain complicated movements nicely adjusted to each 
other, such as the beating of the heart and the movements of the 
intestines and other organs, all of which are necessary means of 
keeping up the vitality of the system and enabling the body to per¬ 
form its work. In a decapitated frog, Professor Huxley tells us, 
if the limbs are stimulated by touching them with a drop of acid, 
rapid and active movements will take place, “ even the feeblest 
and simplest of which require a certain combination of muscles, 
and some of them, such as the act of rubbing off the acids, are in 
the highest degree complex. In all of them, too, a certain pur¬ 
pose or end is evident; ” and “ in the more complex movements, 
such a purpose is strikingly apparent .” The spinal cord is only 
in part a transmitter of impulses to and from the brain ; but in 
part, also, “ it is an independent nervous centre, capable of origin¬ 
ating combined movements ” upon the reception of a nervous im¬ 
pulse. The conscious mind knows nothing of these movements ; 
they are produced and regulated, so to speak, by a power outside 
of ourselves, and so regulated as to suit the varying exigencies 
of the moment, and to serve important purposes in the animal 
economy. 

Thus far we have considered only a class of facts, with the ob¬ 
vious deductions from them, which have been for some time famil¬ 
iarly known to physiologists. But Hartmann proceeds to argue in 
a very original and striking manner, that even the voluntary move¬ 
ments of the muscles and limbs cannot be effected without the coop¬ 
eration of the Unconscious. I simply will the movements of my 
fingers by which these words are written, without knowing any¬ 
thing of the intricate machinery of nerves, muscles, and tendons 
by which the volition is executed, or even of the particular point 
in the brain which must be touched, in order to bring the compli¬ 
cated apparatus into play in such manner that precisely this move¬ 
ment, and not an entirely irrelevant one, may be brought about. 
The brain may be compared, he says, to the key-board of a piano¬ 
forte, though so curiously fashioned as to present within narrow 
limits almost a countless multitude of keys; and the right note can 
be sounded, or the intended motion be effected, only on condition 
of instantly hitting the right one out of the whole number. Speak¬ 
ing of the human body in his earnest and yet simple manner, good 
Dr. Watts exclaims: — 

“ Strange that a harp of thousand strings should keep in tune so long ! ” 

Stranger still is it, that an unseen musician should be always at 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 437 


hand to make the instrument discourse eloquent music in the most 
intricate harmony and melody, whatever combination of these its 
owner may call for. Consider what various, rapid, and skilfully 
combined movements of his arms and fingers the human organist 
must call for, in order to express his musical ideas ; and how the 
curiously complicated structure of his brain, his nervous and mus¬ 
cular system, which he knows nothing about, is so directed by his 
unseen assistant as to correspond precisely to his volitions. He 
merely wills the work, and it is done for him, though not by 
him. 

Further proof of the action of “ the Unconscious ” is afforded 
by the phenomena of Instinct, which is defined by Hartmann to 
be “ acting in conformity to a purpose, without any consciousness 
of that purpose.” There are only three possible modes of account¬ 
ing for such actions: 1. That it is a mechanical consequence of the 
animal’s corporeal organization ; 2. That the brute’s mind is so con¬ 
stituted by nature as to be a sort of spiritual automaton ; 3. The 
doctrine here maintained, that it results from the constant inter¬ 
vention of the Unconscious. The first of these hypotheses accords 
with the Cartesian dogma, that animals are only curiously fashioned 
machines ; and it is here controverted, on the ground that the in¬ 
stincts are often dissimilar, when the bodily structure is the same. 
Thus, all spiders have the same spinning apparatus, though one 
species always constructs regular polygonal and radiated webs; an¬ 
other weaves them in any irregular form ; while a third does not 
build any web, but lines with its silk the sides and door of the 
hole in which it lives. All birds have essentially the same means, 
claws and bill, for constructing a nest; but the forms adopted by 
them, the places chosen, and the modes of attaching the structure 
to its supports, present a measureless variety. They have the 
same organs of voice, but the songs of no two species are alike. 
On the other hand, the instincts often are the same, though the 
organizations are dissimilar. The migrating impulse shows itself 
with equal strength in animals very differently constituted, and 
provided with various means for performing the journey, whether 
by land, or water, or through the air. Numerous species are ar¬ 
boreal in their habits, though very few of them have similar means 
or reasons for making their homes in trees. 

Moreover, the attempt to explain instinct as the blind and 
necessary operation of machinery, either in the animal’s corporeal 
or its mental organization, only pushes the designing action of the 
Unconscious one step farther back. It is the same Power which 


438 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


does the work, and with the same purpose in view, whether it 
operates directly and at the moment, like a special Providence, or 
provides for it long beforehand by a far-seeing contrivance, which 
impels the animal mechanically to do just the right thing at just 
the right time. Instinctive action is not incessant, often is not 
uniformly periodic ; but it comes into play only when exigencies 
arise, which would afford sufficient motives, if the conscious human 
intellect were concerned, to call out all its inventive skill, all its 
defensive and provident energies. And the wisdom of the Un¬ 
conscious, thus manifested in instinct, far surpasses the wisdom of 
man. It never hesitates or wavers; it takes no time for deliber¬ 
ation ; it effects instantly the necessary combination of numerous 
and far-reaching means; and it makes no mistakes. Hartmann 
rightly attributes to it that mysterious power, which we have no 
one English name for — in German, Helhehen, in French, clair¬ 
voyance — which is properly divine, for it is unquestionably super¬ 
human. Thus, carry away blindfold some animals, like the carrier 
pigeon, the honey bee, and even some quadrupeds, to a distance of 
many leagues, by a route which they have never before traversed, 
and instantly, on being set free, they return “ in a bee-line ” to 
their old homes. A species of wasp stores up food of a kind 
which it never uses for itself, and carefully deposits it in a fit re¬ 
ceptacle which is not its own abode, for the use of its young 
whose birth it will not live to witness. It is in view of prodigies 
like these, that even cold and skeptical Kant exclaims, “ Instinct 
is the voice of God.” Hartmann’s interpretation of them, that 
they are the action of the Unconscious, sounds like bathos, but 
has precisely the same meaning as Kant’s. These facts obviously 
negative the fanciful hypothesis, that human reason is developed 
out of animal instinct through a blind process, which necessarily 
perpetuates all accidental variations from the typical form if they 
are improvements on it, while it just as necessarily kills out all 
changes for the worse. Man has lost a wonderful faculty which 
is still possessed in great perfection by birds and insects. We 
ought also to consider that nothing is gained by referring the in¬ 
stinct to the structure of the organism, whether mental or corpo¬ 
real ; for it is already obvious, and will be more fully proved here¬ 
after, that the organic structure itself is built up, step by step, by 
the purposeful action of the Unconscious. Hence, instead of 
making the instinct to depend on the organization of the brain, we 
ought rather to regard the whole nervous system as fashioned by 
the instinct which was innate in the germ. 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 489 


Bodily movements having a useful purpose, though their motive 
or exciting cause is not a thought originating in the brain, but 
merely an impression on the sense or some irritation of the skin, 
are usually attributed to the reflex action of the nerves, and are 
considered as entirely mechanical. But as the effect of a single 
stimulus, though not reaching the brain, and so unconscious, may 
be to induce a series of nicely coordinated motions, the whole re¬ 
sult of which is important for the welfare of the organism, the ac¬ 
tion ought to be classed with the phenomena of instinct rather 
than with the operation of machinery. The involuntary move¬ 
ments thus induced are often surer, quicker, and even more grace¬ 
ful, than the voluntary ones ; and through the perfecting power of 
habit, even the action, which was deliberate in its origin, may 
drop out of consciousness, and thus come to appear mechanical. 
In such cases, we often will the combined result, but know nothing 
of the successive steps of the process by which it is effected. 
Hartmann supposes, that the brain consciously sets the lower ner¬ 
vous centres at work, and these unconsciously guide the muscles so 
as to perform the intended act. 

If the nest of'the bird or the web of the spider is damaged, the 
animal quickly repairs the rent, and makes the structure as service¬ 
able as before. In like manner, if some of the bird’s wing-feath¬ 
ers are pulled out, or the spider has one of its legs accidentally 
torn off, “ the Unconscious ” quickly makes good the loss, and the 
sufferer recovers its whole locomotive power. Shall we say that 
the operation in the two former cases is purposeful, but in the two 
latter that it is purposeless ? If the artisan tears his coat, he can 
mend it; if he cuts his finger, “ nature ” will mend it for him in 
forty-eight hours. Yet, according to Decandolle, Mr. Charles Dar¬ 
win, and Professor Huxley, we have no right to say that “nature” 
intended to do any such thing. Very marvellous is the vis medica- 
trix reparatrixque Naturce. After poisoning their patients with 
drugs through many centuries, the doctors have at last come to 
know their business better, and now generally stand aside, or at¬ 
tempt only to remove obstacles which ignorance or accident may 
have put in the way, so as to leave free course to the curative 
agencies of the Unconscious, which alone can restore the patient 
to perfect health. 

The reconstructive power (vis reparatrix) of the Unconscious, 
as in replacing an entire limb or segment of the body after its 
amputation, is far more frequently and perfectly shown in the 
lower species of animals than in those of a higher grade, and least 


440 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


of all at the summit of the scale, in man, where usually nature 
only reunites and heals (vis medicatrix ), but does not restore. 
The animal has here a great advantage over man, and thus again, 
as in the case of instinct, Darwinism fails to explain the facts, 
since evolution from the lower to the highest form is not improve¬ 
ment, development is not progress, except it be progress down hill, 
and therefore the theory of “ natural selection ” out of “ a strug¬ 
gle for life” is not applicable. Hartmann ingeniously accounts 
for nature’s reconstructive power being less active in the higher 
forms of animal life, by saying that the Unconscious here turns 
all its energies inward, so to speak, in order to improve the intel¬ 
lect through developing the brain, and consequently has less effort 
to spare in reproducing crushed or amputated joints and limbs. 
If one of the Annelidm is cut in two by a cross section, nature 
builds up each of the severed parts into a perfect animal again, 
reconstructing a head with its proper appendages for the lower 
half, and a tail with its adjuncts for the upper one. It would 
seem, says Hartmann, as if there must be present in each of the 
severed parts an Idea of what was wanting in order to build up 
again the whole typical form of the species; and this Idea is the 
pattern or model according to which the Unconscious works. 
From each of the cut ends a minute drop of protoplasm exudes, 
and this is quickly and deftly moulded in each case into such pro¬ 
longations of the alimentary canal, the blood-vessels, and nerves 
as are needed respectively for the upper and the lower half of the 
animal as a whole, several organs in one of the reconstructed 
moieties having nothing analogous to them in the other. Merely 
physical causation, blind mechanism, cannot explain such a pro¬ 
cess ; Will and Intellect must cooperate in the work. 

The plastic power of nature (nisus formativus ) consists in so 
building up every organism that, at each stage of its existence, it 
shall perfectly realize or represent the typical form, the Idea, of 
its peculiar species ; while its curative and restorative power aims 
only at the preservation of this form against accidents after it has 
once been constructed. In a large sense, both these powers may 
be regarded as instincts innate in the germ, and working continu¬ 
ously, but unconsciously, towards keeping up the countless definite 
forms of life, each in its own kind. Indeed, Instinct may be con¬ 
sidered as the most general expression, the typical form, of the 
action of the Unconscious. In each case, a peculiar useful or 
necessary result is the goal of the process, requiring foresight and 
choice by unconscious Intellect, and the application of unconscious 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 441 


force or Will supplying the means for its attainment. The ulti¬ 
mate purpose, the final end and aim of the animal kingdom as 
such, Hartmann insists, is the development of consciousness. In 
the vegetable realm, on the contrary, all the energies of the Un¬ 
conscious are devoted to the mere conversion of inorganic matter 
into organic, and of the lower organic structures, or stages of 
combination, into higher ones ; and therefore it has, so to speak, 
no spare force left for efforts at internalization, and for building 
up forms of subjectivity. But animals have their food provided 
for them ready made by the processes of vegetation ; and hence, 
the Unconscious in them can apply itself chiefly to constructing a 
nervous system and a brain as organs of a conscious mind. What 
vegetative life produces, animal life consumes ; and from the lowest 
animal form up to man, we witness a constantly rising and height¬ 
ened development of nervous structure and consciousness. Thus, 
freedom of locomotion is needed in order to gain the wider and 
more diversified experience which is a necessary means of mental 
development, and so of rising to a higher stage of conscious life. 
Hence, the lowest animals, as in the case of some aquatic species, 
because fettered for life to one spot, are hardly distinguishable 
from plants. 

It is not necessary to pursue farther the train of argument and 
illustrations by which Hartmann attempts to prove inductively the 
omnipresence of an unconscious Will and Intellect in nature’s cor¬ 
poreal forms. But the few specimens here given of his mode of 
conducting the inquiry may suffice, I think, to indicate the abun¬ 
dance of rich material which he has at hand for the purposes of 
his theory, and the clearness and ingenuity with which he reasons 
upon the facts adduced as the groundwork of his conclusions. But 
before passing to his second book, which considers the action of 
the Unconscious in the human mind, I must briefly notice his ar¬ 
gument against the doctrine of Schopenhauer, who holds that the 
essence or iumost being of nature is a merely blind Will, not ac¬ 
companied or directed in any of its lower stages by any form of 
Intellect. Hartmann maintains on the contrary, that Will as such, 
in order to express itself in determinate volitions, must be insepa¬ 
rably united with cognition; that it could not act at all except in 
cooperation with mind. The very nature of volition is a felt dis¬ 
satisfaction with an existing state of things, and an attempt to 
bring about a different state of them ; that is, to produce a change. 
It necessarily implies one condition which is present and which 
Hone is real, as the starting point, and another condition, which, 


i 


442 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


because it is willed, must exist in the future, and therefore can 
be now present only in idea. In other words, we cannot will 
without knowing what we will. Then there must be an end or 
aim for every volition ; and this end can be present only in thought, 
for if it were also present in reality, we should already pos¬ 
sess all that we desire, and there would be no occasion to will. 
Hence, without thought, without an idea of what is still future, 
in other words, without a purpose or Final Cause, Will would not 
be Will, as it could not be definitely expressed in any determinate 
volition, or aim at any one thing more than another. A volition 
without any definite aim or content is inconceivable ; for there is 
no such thing as Will in general, that wills nothing in particular. 
The mere striving or effort is only the Form which is common to 
all volitions; any one of them, in order to be realized, must have the 
merely blank Form filled out With a content, that is, with a deter¬ 
minate purpose, which is necessarily mental or ideal, to accomplish 
some particular end. Consequently, Schopenhauer’s whole theory 
respecting the secondary and derivative nature of Intellect, created 
at a comparatively late period in the history of the Will, and so 
created only in order to be the minister and servant of the auto¬ 
cratic Will, falls to the ground as a baseless assumption. Mind 
is restored to its rights by Hartmann, as coeval with Will, and in¬ 
separably united with it in the Unconscious, though capable of 
being divorced from it, and thus of existing independently, in 
its human manifestation. But Will, as already remarked, can¬ 
not, under any circumstances, be separated from Intellect, being 
forever dependent upon it for guidance and determination. Of 
course, the guiding idea, the dominant motive, may be unconscious. 
Often we are not aware what we will, or even that we will. But 
the determinate nature of the volition, the fact that we will this 
rather than that , proves that the guiding idea is always there, 
though it may not rise into consciousness. 

Hartmann begins his proof of the action of the Unconscious in 
the realm of mind by attempting to show that man, as well as the 
brute, has instincts properly so called. This seems to me ques¬ 
tionable doctrine, and the evidence here adduced in its support is 
certainly insufficient, and even, in great part, irrelevant. I believe 
that instinct differs from reason, not merely in degree, surely, for 
in some of its manifestations, as has just been shown, it is evi¬ 
dently the superior, but in kind ; that it is given to the brutes as 
a substitute for reason ; that in truth, the two faculties exist in 
inverse ratio to each other; and as at the bottom of the scale, in 


i 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 443 


the lowest animal, there is certainly no trace of reason, so at the 
top, in man, there is no vestige of instinct. In his consciously 
voluntary acts, man is left entirely to the teachings of experience, 
and never consciously employs means for a useful end without 
having first perceived their fitness for that end. Under the influ¬ 
ence of habit, it is true, this perception of the relation of the 
means to the end may gradually fall out of consciousness, and he 
may seem to continue the action mechanically ; but always rea¬ 
son is necessary for the first formation of the habit. We have so 
perfectly learned to walk and to write, for example, that we cease 
to be aware of the series of volitions necessary for taking each 
step and forming each letter ; but the young child slowly acquires 
these useful habits through distinct conscious efforts. Of all the 
instances cited by Hartmann, in his attempt to prove that the hu¬ 
man mind possesses instincts properly so called, not one conforms 
to his own definition of instinct, that it is “ acting in conformity 
to a purpose without any consciousness of that purpose.” They 
are cases only of natural and primitive emotions and appetites, 
which dictate, indeed, the end to be pursued, but do not guide us 
in selecting the right means for its attainment; on the contrary, 
too frequently the stronger the feeling or desire, the more mistaken 
we are in our eager attempts to gratify it, which often defeat the 
very purpose we have in view. Instinct makes no such blunders. 
Thus, Hartmann appeals to the strong primitive emotions of ma¬ 
ternal love, pity for distress, gratitude, shame, fear of death, etc. 
But these are no guiding instincts ; for when most under the in¬ 
fluence of them, people blunder wofuily, and generally adopt any 
course rather than the best one for satisfying them. Hartmann 
even argues, that the sexual appetite is an instinct, because it 
really has a useful purpose, that of continuing and multiplying the 
species, though it is gratified only as a blind impulse. A Malthusian 
wall not admit the force of this argument, and it directly contro¬ 
verts its author’s own theory of Pessimism. 

The ablest and best portions of Hartmann’s second book are 
those in which he points out the necessity of the action of “ the 
Unconscious ” in the origin of language, and in what is strictly 
called ‘‘ Thought.” In respect to Language, it is only putting his 
theory into other words to say, that he maintains what the old 
fable of Prometheus so beautifully teaches concerning the origin 
of Fire, that it is the immediate gift of heaven. Even the low¬ 
est savages are never found without this divine endowment, this 
necessary prerequisite for progress, this conditio sine qua non for 


444 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


any advance in civilization. Not one of the animals below man 
seems to have any capacity for it, or any rudiments out of which 
it could possibly be constructed. Several of th^m may be taught 
to articulate words with perfect distinctness; but not one, by any 
amount of painstaking instruction, can be enabled to talk , that is, 
to join words together with appropriateness, and evident percep¬ 
tion of their relative meaning, into an intelligible proposition ; and 
this for good cause, because they are entirely devoid of that power, 
the faculty of Thought strictly so called, by which alone the re¬ 
lations of words with each other, and of words with things, can be 
at all apprehended. When words are taken separately, and so 
out of relation to each other, they are merely the elements of 
speech not yet developed or fully constructed ; Language properly 
so called begins to exist with the Proposition, and therefore con¬ 
sists in a synthesis of words. To recur to a former illustration, 
if a pig could only be enabled to say to himself, or to others, “ I 
am a pig,” he would, ipso facto , cease to be a pig. On the other 
hand, Laura Bridgeman, blind, deaf, and dumb from infancy, and 
having only a very imperfect sense of smell, can now write a good 
letter and keep up a sensible conversation, through her fingers, on 
any topic. Let Mr. Darwin do as much for dog, elephant, or 
chimpanzee, as Dr. S. G. Howe did for Laura Bridgeman, and he 
will convert the world to Darwinism. 

Any one at all acquainted with the history of Philosophy, says 
Hartmann, must have learned how much it owes to the analysis of 
the structure of language, and to the study of grammatical forms. 
Most of the fundamental principles of logic, psychology, and met¬ 
aphysics are, so to speak, imbedded and innate in the wonderful 
mechanism of speech. They belong to language as such, because 
they coustitute its very essence; and hence they are found alike 
in the rudest, and in the most highly developed, tongues. Schel- 
ling r rightly argues, that consciousness does not become possible ex¬ 
cept through language, and therefore the origin of language must 
have antedated the birth of consciousness. In every form of hu¬ 
man speech we find the necessary elements for constructing a 
proposition ; that is to say, we find Subject clearly distinguished 
from Predicate, Subject from Object, Substantive from Verb and 
Adjective. If the language is not far enough developed to ex¬ 
press these distiuctions through inflectional forms, they are at 
least intelligibly indicated through the relative position of the 
words in a sentence. Hence they are, and always have been, just 
as familiar to the native Australian and the Hottentot, as to a 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 445 


Bopp or a Grimm. If they had not been innate in Laura Bridge- 
man’s soul, Dr. Howe never could have found them there, or en¬ 
abled her to express them in a finger-alphabet, when the sense of 
^ touch was the only medium of communication between teacher 
and pupil. When the human mind for the first time wondered at 
itself, and began to philosophize, it found itself already provided 
with language containing a rich store of abstract ideas and nice 
distinctions and classifications of thought; and as Kant remarks, 

“ a great part, perhaps the greatest part, of the subsequent busi¬ 
ness of reason has been to analyze and take account of what it 
thus found preexistent and familiar to use in its own modes of ex¬ 
pression.” 

The conception of judgment , as a distinct mental process, is 
directly abstracted from the verbal proposition , merely discarding 
the form of words; the Category of Substance and Attribute is 
derived in the same manner from Subject and Predicate ; the en- 
tliymeme, which is the concise form of the syllogism , is still more 
tightly packed up in the word “ therefore,” ergo , and its equiva¬ 
lents. Hartmann says, “ to discover and nicely discriminate the 
mental process which is the counterpart of the grammatical dis¬ 
tinction between Substantive and Verb, is still an unsolved, and 
perhaps very fruitful, philosophical problem; in this particular, 
conscious speculation is still far behiud the unconscious creation 
of the genius of humanity.” No new relations of ideas are forged 
or invented, when metaphysical analysis first brings into clear con¬ 
sciousness the distinctions and processes which are wrapped up in 
verbal forms as their garments. Philosophy has only to develop 
and distinctly enunciate what language offers to it in a crude state, 
or in the germ. Nascent philosophy finds lying before it abundant 
material, already thought out and prepared for its use, in the cases 
of declension, in the voices, tenses, and moods of the verb, and in 
a rich treasure of word-concepts, expressive, through their etymo- M 
logical forms, of the fundamental divisions and relations of thought. 
The primitive ideas with which psychology and ontology have to 
deal are found expressed in all languages by words which signify 
Being, Phenomenon, Becoming, Understanding, Thinking, Feeling, 
Desiring, Ought, Motion, Force, Power, Cause, and the like ; and 
there is work enough for many centuries yet to come, before this 
treasure-house of the Unconscious speculation of the race will be 
exhausted. Who taught the rude Germans, as yet wandering in 
the depths of their Hercynian forest, to designate Cause as Ursache, 

“ the primitive business or thing,” answering to the Latin causa and 


/ c Ml ( 



cy 



(' 


446 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


Italian cosa; or Judgment as Urtheil , “the primitive sentence 
of partition,” as between plaintiff and defendant, or between sub¬ 
ject and attribute; or Notion ( Concept) as Begriff, “ a grasping 
together ” of several attributes aud things into one general idea ? 
The student of Greek will easily add to these few many other 
curious examples from the terminology of Plato and Aristotle. 

Hartmann maintains, that as the groundwork or general struc¬ 
ture of Language is far too intricate and comprehensive to have 
been built up by one man, it must have been a work of the masses, 
or the people at large; and that it is also too nicely arranged, aud 
uniform in plan, to have been produced by the conscious labor of 
several persons working in concert. Only an instinct of the masses 
can have created it, such as we see exemplified in the joint indus¬ 
try of a hive of bees or a community of ants. The process of 
development, also, in the whole family of languages, is essentially 
one and the same, both up to the period of culmination of each, 
and then through its successive stages of decline and degradation. 
He further insists, that what we may call the metaphysics or 
philosophy of the Unconscious, as embodied in Language, far from 
being perfected by the advancing culture and civilization of the 
people, attains its ripest development and most distinct expression 
at a very early period, in prehistoric times, as in the case of San¬ 
skrit, and thenceforward becomes gradually deteriorated, through 
the resolution of inflectional forms, the grinding down of conso¬ 
nantal sounds, the invasion of foreign elements, and a general de¬ 
cay in point of simplicity, force, and pregnancy of expression. 
Speech no longer so faithfully mirrors the primitive and uncon¬ 
scious thought of the race ; it becomes perverted, as manners often 
are, by an excess of conscious effort, by straining after refine¬ 
ment, and by the corrupting tendencies of fashion and precept. 
The Categories of Aristotle are an exhaustive enumeration of the 
germs of all metaphysical and logical speculation ; and according 
to Trendelenburg, who is followed by Dean Mansel, these Catego¬ 
ries are only “ the different modes of naming things, classified 
primarily according to the grammatical distinctions *of speech, and 
gained, not from the observation of objects, but from the analysis 
of assertions.” Kant attempted a similar generalization from an 
exclusively subjective point of view; and his Categories, as we 
have seen, merely express the twelve Forms of Judgment, which 
result from a logical analysis of the Proposition, as the necessary 
Form of the synthesis of words into a Language. 

In passing to a consideration of the action of the Unconscious 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 447 


in Thought strictly so called, we make a hardly perceptible transi¬ 
tion, since Language is in great part only the expression and em¬ 
bodiment of Thought. As I have elsewhere remarked, 1 Words 
are not only signs and preservatives, they are also substitutes, for 
Thought; and this peculiarity of Language is an excellence or 
defect in it, according as it is, or is not, judiciously used. Hence 
it may be said that the use of Language gives us the power of 
thinking in short-hand ; words are stenographic thoughts. This 
abbreviated expression of thought is a great help to the memory; 
and thus Language is the great repository of Thought, not only in 
books, but in our own minds. So the algebraist easily recalls to 
mind a few brief formulas, which enable him to perform almost 
mechanically long numerical computations, which the arithmeti¬ 
cian must slowly and painfully think out step by step. This 
symbolic knowledge, as it was termed by Leibnitz, bears about the 
same relation to the full thought, of which it is the abbreviated 
expression, that our ordinary cursive handwriting does to an ideo¬ 
graphic system, or to the picture-writing of the Mexicans. 

In respect to the processes of reminiscence, reasoning, induc¬ 
tion, discovery, composition, invention, and several others, Hart¬ 
mann justly observes, that every thing depends on the right 
thought occurring to one at the right moment. And this happy 
suggestion is invariably the work of the Unconscious. Vainly do 
we rack our brains with persistent conscious effort and research 
to find the word for the riddle or the solution of the problem; it 
will not come at our bidding. And then suddenly, perhaps after 
a considerable interval of time, during which we had discharged 
the subject from our thought, and perhaps when we were idly mus¬ 
ing on some other theme, just what we wanted flashes upon us as 
by inspiration. The man of science is quite as dependent as the 
poet, or the wit, on these gleams of light coming from the Uncon¬ 
scious. Archimedes stepping out of a bath, or Newton idly gaz¬ 
ing when an apple falls from the tree, suddenly calls out, Eu¬ 
reka ! and the problem, which may have perplexed him half a 
lifetime, is spontaneously solved. What remains is easy enough, 
and may be slowly elaborated in conscious thought; it is only, 
through the reasoning process, to bring the new truths into har¬ 
mony with those previously known, and thereby to determine their 
classification and place in a system. The premises being given in 

1 A Treatise on Logic, or The Laws of Pure Thought, comprising both the Aris- 
totelic and Hamiltonian Analyses of Logical Forms, and some Chapters of Applied 
Logic. By F. Bowen. Cambridge. C. W. Sever. 1864. p. 24. 


448 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


immediate intuition, through inspiration from the Unconscious, the 
right inference from them follows, as it were, mechanically, being 
drawn as easily and correctly by a simpleton as by a man of 
genius; in fact, says Hartmann, it follows necessarily, just as a 
ball propelled by two forces must move on the diagonal which is 
the resultant of their combined directions. 

We can easily see that the aid of the Unconscious is indispen¬ 
sable in order to furnish the right thought at the right moment, 
when we consider the nature of Memory, and the vast accumula¬ 
tions, the almost countless wealth, which it constantly has at hand. 
In most of the psychological theories which have been framed to 
explain remembrance, especially in those which are of a physio¬ 
logical and materialistic character, it seems to have been taken 
for granted that the principal, if not the only, fact which needs to 
be accounted for, is the retentive power of mind, or its power of 
holding in a firm grasp for many years the countless individual 
facts and general truths which have gradually been amassed by 
the cumulative labors and experiences of a lifetime. But it is not 
so; the real marvel in the case is the reproductive faculty when 
occasion requires, the wonderful power of Memory, unembar¬ 
rassed by its immense riches, instantly to put its hand on just 
what it wants. Herein does the acquired knowledge of a man of 
genius, a Scaliger or a Macaulay,, differ from the lumber accumu¬ 
lated by a learned fool, in that it all lies at instant command. 
The laws of association offer no explanation of the fact, but are 
merely a statement and classification of the phenomena needing to 
be explained; they tell us how , but not why , we remember. Just 
so, physical laws do not govern material events, or exert on 
them any agency whatever, but merely classify and describe 
them. Now, observe that all the vast stores of Memory are only 
figuratively said to be actually present in the mind; they are 
latent, they are only potential wealth. They are all the property 
of “ the Unconscious,” whose treasure-house is nobody knows 
where. Out of the skies, out of the depths, suddenly comes back 
upon us the long-lost remembrance of the scenes of our youth; 
and though events now passing around us quickly fade for the 
present from our mental vision, — 

“ Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.” 

The hypothesis of the materialist avails nothing, or rather serves 
only to render the phenomenon more mysterious and inscrutable. 
Granted, if you will, that each event of observation is at once 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 449 


stamped ineffaceably upon the brain ; then, the imprint being al¬ 
ways there, why does it quickly cease to be visible? Why does 
it entirely pass out of consciousness for many years, and then 
what mysterious power suddenly brings it back in its pristine dis¬ 
tinctness, still sharply defined, unblurred by the myriads of ob¬ 
served facts meanwhile impressed upon the same limited surface ? 
Familiar as it is, this alternate lighting up and fading out of con¬ 
scious remembrance is the most marvellous fact in our mental 
constitution ; in view of it, every reflecting person must stand 
amazed at himself. 

Monist as he is, ultimately resolving matter itself into the com¬ 
bined Will and Intellect of the Unconscious, Hartmann is still just 
as crass a materialist as Herbert Spencer, and maintains that the 
phenomena of memory may all be traced to the action of the nerv¬ 
ous system. It is wonderful that he fails to see, that herein his 
theory is not only inconsistent with itself, but is unintelligible 
when regarded as an attempted explanation of the facts. Since 
the brain is a material structure, impressions made upon it can be 
distinguished from each other only in shape or outline, and pro¬ 
cesses generated in it can be only modes of molecular motion. 
External visible objects and events can be outlined by an artist, 
impressed in wax, cut in marble, or stamped on the brain. But 
how can we outline or paint, or what “ dance of atoms ” will 
faithfully represent, articulate sounds, odors, abstract ideas, emo¬ 
tions, or processes of pure thought ? These can become impres¬ 
sions on the brain, that is, can be visibly or tangibly presented, 
only through arbitrary signs, or such merely conventional symbols 
as letters and words. Adopt such means, then, and the inquiry 
immediately arises, what language, what alphabet, what sort of char¬ 
acters, does the stamping power of “ the Unconscious ” employ. 
Does it write German text or an Italian hand ? Is it master of a 
good style, or does it even spell correctly ? For we must remem¬ 
ber, that the emotions and abstract thoughts of the unlettered 
peasant, just as much as those of the philosopher, need to be im¬ 
printed on the brain. Even if we jump these difficulties, and sup¬ 
pose all to be fairly written out on the pulpy surface of the cere¬ 
brum, we must farther imagine the record to be blurred or faded 
out for many years, and then marvellously brightened into visibil¬ 
ity again, when some reminding word or incident comes like a 
vapor bath of iodine to a sun picture. And when all this is ac¬ 
complished, we still need an eye inside of the skull to see the writ¬ 
ing, a mind to comprehend it, and a conviction in that mind that 
29 

/ 


450 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the feelings and thoughts thus inscribed are old acquaintances, 
mere copies from former experience. Let the physiologist or 
chemist contrive what mechanism he may; if an indivisible Ego of 
consciousness is not allowed to come in, the machine will not work. 
The automaton won’t play chess, if an Ego be not smuggled into 
the cupboard. 

But it is farther argued, that the cud of thought is never en¬ 
tirely lost, the succession of ideas being incessant, swift, and 
involuntary; and this looks mechanical. We answer, that the psy¬ 
chologists do not dispute the fact; all admit, that the association 
of ideas is not directly controlled by the will, but is in great part 
arbitrary, sometimes whimsical and grotesque. Poets and wits 
are well aware of this spontaneity of thought, and often there 
is something uncanny in the use which they make of such inspira¬ 
tions. But attention is voluntary, and selection is possible ; and 
thereby, indirectly, we change the whole current of thought at 
will. We arrest the flow when we please, and thus force the river 
into a different channel. No one allows his thoughts always to 
drift at random, as they often do in aimless reverie or a dream. 
But the action of the Unconscious, which is the fountain that 
keeps the river always full, and generally determines whether its 
waters shall be bitter or sweet, and which way they shall run, is 
often checked and controlled by the conscious Ego, that asserts 
its sovereignty, and easily dominates the whole course of thought. 
If consciousness is to be believed when it asserts the train of 
thought to be spontaneous, capricious, and necessary, is it not 
equally to be trusted when it affirms attention and selection to be 
deliberate, voluntary, and free, thus manifesting the power of the 
individual mind to control its own action ? 

We need to have an adequate conception of the magnitude and 
importance of the work which memory has to do, before we can 
rightly understand how far its operation depends upon “ that power 
not ourselves,” which Hartmann calls “ the Unconscious.” An 
obvious illustration will make this point clear. Many educated 
persons, in this country as well as in England, know enough of at 
least four languages, Latin, French, German or Italian, and Eng¬ 
lish, to be able to read any common book in either of them with 
about equal facility. The whole number of English words, not 
including purely technical terms or mere derivatives, is at least 
40,000 ; and that portion of the vocabulary of either of the other 
three languages, which is at the command of a well-educated for¬ 
eigner, is probably half as large. Among the treasures of mem- 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 451 

ory in such a mind, therefore, must be reckoned at least 100,000 
mere words, all of which, with some trifling exceptions for onoma¬ 
topoeia, are symbols as arbitrary as the signs in algebra. What a 

* countless multitude of individual facts and familiar truths in sci¬ 
ence and ordinary life are either wrapped up in these words, or 
exist side by side with them, in any well-informed mind! Cer¬ 
tainly such a mind is far more richly stocked with words and 
ideas than the British Museum is with books. That admirably 
managed institution, suffering from the embarrassment of riches, 
maintains a full staff of well-trained librarians ; and one of them, 
after rummaging the catalogue and the shelves for perhaps ten 
minutes, will triumphantly produce any volume that may be called 
for. But the single invisible librarian, who awaits our orders in 
the crowded chambers of the Memory, is far more speedy and 
skilful in his service. A student reads a page of French or Ger¬ 
man in a minute, and for each of the two or three hundred groups 
of hieroglyphics printed on it, “ the Unconscious ” instantly fur¬ 
nishes us whatever we call for, either its meaning, or its etymology, 
or its English equivalent, or its grammatical relations to other 
groups in the same sentence, or any of the associated ideas in a 
little world of knowledge of which this one word forms the centre. 
We have no conscious clew with which to direct ourselves in the 
search ; it is enough that we have an interest in the point to be 
remembered, that we need it for the work which is in hand, and 
instantly it is produced out of the vast repository. I think this 
single illustration sufficiently proves the presence and agency of 
“ the Unconscious,” and sufficiently disproves the shallow and 
s tupid theory of the materialis ts with which Hartmann has need¬ 
lessly burdened his system. For what merely mechanical or 
chemical action is conceivable as a possible explanation of the 
phenomena in question ? 

Thus far I have endeavored to follow step by step, and in some 
detail, the long array of evidence, the great accumulation of facts 
and arguments distributed under many heads, through which Hart¬ 
man seeks by the inductive method, and on strictly scientific prin¬ 
ciples, to establish the leading doctrine of his Philosophy. But 
the material is so abundant, and the subject itself so far-reaching 
and comprehensive, that in the very limited space yet remaining at 
my command, this attempt at an exhaustive consideration of it 
cannot be carried farther. In fact, as Hartmann himself remarks, 
each of the thirty-six chapters constituting his work may be re¬ 
garded as an independent and tolerably complete treatise on some 

/•/Vt - 




452 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


physical or moral science, some special branch of philosophy, which 
admits of study and criticism by itself, apart from its connection 
with the other portions of his system. And his own treatment of 
each of these themes includes so much, and is kept within so nar¬ 
row limits by great condensation of matter and conciseness of 
expression, that any farther abridgment of it is hardly practicable 
without sacrificing much that is essential for a fair development 
of his thought. Having tracked his progress pretty closely in 
twelve of the earlier and shorter chapters, I must hurry through 
the rest of his work, merely indicating by name many of the sub¬ 
jects which remain, and endeavoring to select a few of the more 
interesting and characteristic points which ought to be noticed with 
some detail. 

The mental faculties are usually distributed into three large 
groups, designated respectively as the Intellect, the Sensibility, 
and the Will. The Philosophy of the Unconscious is concerned 
exclusively with the first and the third of these powers; and Hart¬ 
mann argues with great ingenuity and acuteness, that the feelings 
and emotions placed under the second head ought not to form a 
separate class, since they are only modes of Will and Intellect 
acting together in processes of the Unconscious. Briefly ex¬ 
pressed, the theory is, that all our passions may be resolved into 
mere Pleasure or Pain, since they express only conformity or dis¬ 
agreement with the Will; all that appears peculiar in any one of 
them is due to the Intellect’s conscious or unconscious perception 
of the content of the Will, or the real motive of the volition, 
which is often a secret even to ourselves, and also to a knowledge 
of the circumstances attendant upon the gratification or non-grat¬ 
ification of the ruling desire or volition of the moment. Tooth¬ 
ache is distinguished from ear-ache simply by our perception of 
the different locality and the relative intensity of the Paiu en¬ 
dured. There are no qualitative, but only quantitative, distinc¬ 
tions between different Pleasures and different Pains ; the inten¬ 
sity of either depends upon the vehemence or strength of the 
volition, often an unconscious one, which is favored or crossed. 
Many sensations are indifferent to us at their ordinary pitch, being 
neither grateful nor irksome ; but if, while remaining qualitatively 
the same, they are greatly changed in degree, intense pain or 
pleasure may result. Thus, the ordinary effect of-light upon the 
eye is indifferent to us; but if intense, as from the sun at noon, 
it becomes very painful. We wrongly consider the perception, 
which is an act of the Intellect, as the cause of the pain, which is 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 453 


a manifestation of Will, because the two usually go together, or 
are simultaneous. The pain may be either continuous or inter¬ 
mittent ; and most of its distinctions, which are supposed to be 
differences in kind, result from our knowledge of the various 
modes of remission, or of the causes of our unpleasant feeling. 
Thus, we describe a bodily pain, first by its locality, and then as 
throbbing, darting, cutting, gnawing, biting, etc. Moreover, we 
weigh different enjoyments and pains against each other; and 
since like can only be measured by like, this would not be possible, 
if they were not qualitatively equal or similar, and only quanti¬ 
tatively different. We decide either to bear the toothache some 
days longer, or permit the cause of anguish to be pulled out; and 
to spend a small sum either in buying a book, procuring a ride, or 
visiting the theatre. 

Mental pleasures also consist in gratified volitions, and mental 
pains in the frustration of the Will. The pain we feel at the 
death of a dear friend, Hartmann coolly argues, is precisely similar 
in kind to the toothache ; and it depends upon the strength of our 
attachment to him, that is, on the vehemence with which we willed 
his continued presence, which is the more acute. One may be 
more lasting than the other, it is true ; but that also is a difference 
in quantity only. Here, too, the chief argument is, that we weigh 
mental pleasures against sensual ones, which would not be possible 
if they were unlike in quality ; for “we do not weigh hay with 
straw, or pecks with pounds.” The intrinsic coinmensurability of 
the two classes, which appears iu language from the sameness of 
name which we give to all sorts of pain and pleasure, must there¬ 
fore be accepted unconditionally as a fact; and it holds not only 
for the various sorts of sensual enjoyment, but for the gratifica¬ 
tions of sense as compared with those of the intellect. In both 
cases, what is really gratified is the Will, the intensity of the pleas¬ 
ure depending upon the strength or energy of the volition. Thus, 
he says, “ a man hesitates between two equally wealthy sisters 
which to choose for his wife, the one plain in feature, but quick¬ 
witted and sensible, and the other a pretty fool ; and according as 
mere sensual desire or intellectual taste predominates, his choice is 
determined.” Whatever is obscure, inexplicable, and ineffable in 
the nature of feeling and emotion, he argues, proceeds from the 
unconscious mental states, whether of will or intellect, out of which 
they arise or by which they are accompanied. We often do not 
know what we really desire ; and only the pain or pleasure, which 
oomes after the event, instructs us as to the true character of our 


454 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


will. Oar self-respect prevents us from consciously wishing the 
death of a near relative, whose property we are to inherit ; but 
after he is taken away, we find to our shame that the loss does 
not grieve us as it ought. Or we fancy that we have ceased to 
mourn for a friend supposed long ago to have been lost at sea; 
but the transport of joy into which we are thrown by his sudden 
re-appearance proves that we have been all the while unconsciously 
longing for him to come back again. 

In his theory of the action of the Unconscious in our aesthetic 
judgments and the productions of art, Hartmann takes middle 
ground between the doctrine of the idealists and that of the empiri¬ 
cists. According to the former, which is in the main that of Plato, 
there is innate in the human soul an Idea of the Beautiful, from 
which in each department of art is constructed an Ideal; and in 
proportion to its conformity with this type, any object or creation 
is adjudged to possess beauty. But the empiricists maintain, that 
in the works of art which come the nearest to this pretended Ideal, 
no elements are to be found which did not preexist in nature, 
though in combination with other ingredients which partially mar 
their effect; and that the vocation of the artist is to distinguish and 
eliminate these deformed and injurious adjuncts, and bring together 
only what can excite unmixed admiration and pleasure. Hartmann 
says, that each of these theories is partly right and partly wrong. 
The idealists are right in holding that the process of creating an 
Ideal lies behind or above consciousness, so that, in this sense, the 
sesthetical judgment is a priori ; but they are wrong in regarding 
this Ideal as a pure abstraction, an indeterminate unit, originating 
we know not how, — a direct gift from heaven. On the contrary, 
the Beautiful, since it is intuitively perceived by Sense, must exist 
in countless individual and determinate forms and concrete mani¬ 
festations. The Ideal is not one, but many; that of humanity, for 
instance, must include both a masculine and a feminine Type ; and 
in the former, must be found the Ideal of infancy, childhood, youth, 
manhood, and old age ; also, the Ideal of a Hercules, an Odysseus, 
a Zeus, etc. To maintain the eternal existence of all these dis¬ 
tinct and concrete ideal forms, infinitely numerous as they are, 
would be to assert the reality, not of the single miracle of one ab¬ 
stract Ideal, but of numberless individual miracles. Rather the 
creative process of each takes place in the Unconscious, and the 
special Ideal first appears fully formed, concrete and determinate, 
as an inspiration to the mind of the individual artist. Its source 
is not from without, as the empiricist vainly supposes, but from 


Hartmann’s philosophy of the unconscious. 455 

within, in the instinctive and preconscious selection and arrange¬ 
ment of the fittest elements to impart aesthetic pleasure. 

In the chapter on Character and Morality, a similar theory is 
propounded respecting the unconscious formation of rules of con¬ 
duct, really generated by repeated observation of what is beneficial 
for the individual and society, but first manifested to the conscious 
intellect when completely formed and put together, and thus ap¬ 
pearing as an a priori revelation of the Moral Law within the 
breast, and claiming supreme authority as the voice of conscience, 
because its origin is unknown. Volitions as such, Hartmann main¬ 
tains, differ from each other only in intensity ; all the other ap¬ 
parent distinctions between them relate only to their content , that 
is, to their Motive, or the end and purpose which the Will has in 
view and strives to accomplish. But the apprehension of Motives 
is the work of the Intellect; and according as this faculty holds up 
before the Will various objects of desire, such as sensual enjoy¬ 
ment, wealth, honor, reputation, learning, success in art, or in love, 
etc., volitions are more frequently and strenuously directed to one 
or the other of them, and the individual is said to be covetous, 
licentious, vain, proud, ambitious, eager to learn, and the like. 
Which motive will be habitually preferred, or which will be 
chosen in any one case under given circumstances, we can cer¬ 
tainly know only through observation of the result, by experience. 
We can learn what our own character is, only in the same way in 
which we study the character of our fellow-man, by reasoning back 
from what is actually done to the probable motive which induced 
the action, and hence to the habitual strength of the desire which 
caused that special motive to predominate. We can never tell be¬ 
forehand with certainty how a particular motive will operate on 
different men ; nay, we know not, previous to the trial, what influ¬ 
ence it will have over ourselves. Often our firmest resolutions, 
our most deliberately formed plans, are scattered like chaff before 
the wind, when the true Will comes forth out of the night of the 
Unconscious, and announces its decision. Hartmann seems to 
adopt the doctrine of Kant respecting each man’s Intelligible Char¬ 
acter, which is born with him and forms the inmost kernel of his 
being, which is the groundwork on which his empirical or acquired 
Character is subsequently built up, and therefore determines what 
power a given motive shall have over him in any particular case. 
Rules of conduct, whether dictated by prudence or conscience, must 
be classed with the other motives held up by the Understanding 
before the Will, with the expectation, often a vain one, of thereby 


456 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


influencing its decision. The consideration of this subject is avow¬ 
edly left imperfect, as Hartmann does not profess in this work to 
have elaborated a theory of Ethics. 

I pass over a curious chapter on Mysticism, in which, as it 
seems to me on very insufficient grounds, Hartmann attempts to 
prove, that the germs both of all philosophy and all revealed relig¬ 
ion are to be found in the heated fancies of the Mystics, these 
fancies again being due to inspirations from the Unconscious. 
The evidence adduced goes far enough only to confirm a text of 
Scripture, which he unconsciously labors to establish, that “ the 
prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men 
of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Also, a 
chapter on the action of the Unconscious in History need not de¬ 
tain us here, since it contains only the speculations of the writer 
on a topic which has been worn threadbare of late years, because 
it is a favorite theme with the evolutionists and the fatalists, which 
they have pretentiously designated as Sociology, or the Science of 
History. It claims to be regarded as an exact science; but as no 
two of the numerous theories which have been constructed about 
it bear even a remote resemblance to each other, people generally 
have no wish to discuss the validity of its pretensions. They are 
content to leave that task to those who have succeeded to their 
own satisfaction in harmonizing with each other the doctrines 
upon this “ scientific ” subject maintained respectively by Comte, 
Buckle, Hartmann, Herbert Spencer, and a dozen other English 
and German speculatists. The conclusion at which Hartmann 
arrives may be presented here, as it is a summary of his whole 
doctrine upon this subject. 

“ The Greeks, Romans, and Mohammedans are quite right in 
their conception of an elna.pfj.tvr), or Fate, in so far as this signifies 
the necessity of every event regarded as the effect of its imme¬ 
diate cause, so that every link in the chain is dependent on that 
which precedes it, and therefore the whole succession is foreor¬ 
dained and determined through its first member. Christianity is 
right in its belief in a Providence, since every event takes place 
in perfect conformity with the foresight and intention of an ab¬ 
solutely wise directing Cause; that is, as a means for carrying out 
the purposes of the never-erring Unconscious, which is Reason 
itself. At any moment, only one event can be logically right and 
best; and this one is just what must happen, for it is as necessary 
as it is wisely conformed to the end in view. Finally, the modern 
ductrine of the rationalistic empiricists is right, that History is 


HARTMANN’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 457 


exclusively the result of the spontaneous action of individuals 
acting in accordance with psychological laws, without any miracle 
resulting from the interference of higher powers. But the up¬ 
holders of the first two theories are wrong in denying Spontaneity, 
while those of the third system are wrong in denying Fate and 
Providence; for the union of all three first constitutes the truth.” 
The doctrine thus stated harmonizes so perfectly with the con¬ 
clusions of Leibnitz upon the same subject, that I doubt not every 
word of it would have been accepted by that great thinker. 

After all that has been said about the importance and even the 
indispensableness of the action of the Unconscious, when Hart¬ 
mann comes to consider its functions relatively, he still decides 
that Consciousness is the higher and more valuable of the two 
agencies, since all progress, both of the individual and of the race, 
depends on enlarging and cultivating the sphere of its influence. 
Each acts within its own well-defined province, and at any one 
time, neither can encroach upon the other, except to a limited 
degree. And yet the welfare of man and the ultimate redemp¬ 
tion of humanity from the misery of existence can be promoted 
only by conscious effort, by gradually encroaching upon the limits 
of the Unconscious, and converting instinctive action into thought¬ 
ful and well-considered endeavor. But how is this possible, on 
the theory here adopted, that a volition in any given case is the 
mysterious and necessary reaction of the Intelligible Character 
upon the motives held out to it, which takes place wholly in the 
realm of the Unconscious ? By conscious and thoughtful con¬ 
sideration of the motives to be presented, Hartmann answers; by 
selecting and laying stress on those which we have found from 
experience to be most efficient in determining the action of the 
Will. We cannot directly shape our desires and volitions; but 
we can do so indirectly, by cultivating conscious reflection upon 
the reasons, principles, and inducements which are most apt to 
guide our actions aright. Hereby, the conscious Intellect, through 
thoughtful deliberation, can widen its sphere of influence, and prof¬ 
itably determine conduct. Hereby, through forming habits of 
acting only upon well considered motives, we can bring about a 
beneficial change of character. We can prevent passion from 
blinding the judgment. We can prevent the indulgence of heed¬ 
lessness and inattention on the one hand, and of indecision and 
indeterminateness on the other; and can educate ourselves to act 
only upon a well-considered plan of conduct, instead of blindly 
following the impulses of the moment. The proper choice of a 


458 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


profession, of the modes of employing our leisure, of our friend¬ 
ships and social-intercourse, also depends upon our conscious and 
deliberate thought. Much of the profitable exercise of intellect iu 
the search after truth, and in aesthetic culture, also falls within the 
sphere of Consciousness. 

“ This harm, at least, results from abandoning ourselves entirely 
to the Unconscious; that one never distinctly knows how much he 
has, or what he is aiming at; that he gropes round in the dark, 
while carrying the lantern of Consciousness in his pocket; that it 
is left to chance whether an inspiration from the Unconscious will 
come when it is most wanted ; that he has no criterion but the 
result, from which to judge what is a happy suggestion from the 
Unconscious, and what is the mere dictate of a freakish fancy, or 
which feeling or impulse he can trust, and which not; and finally, 
that he does not exercise his faculty of conscious judgment and 
reflection, which he can never safely do without, and then, when 
an emergency arises, he must put up with poor analogies, instead 
of rational inferences and comprehensive views. Only what is 
conscious is known to be properly our own ; while the Unconscious 
appears as something incomprehensible, and as a foreign agency, 
upon whose favor one is dependent. While we have our con¬ 
scious faculty as a ready servant, always at hand, and whose 
obedience can be enforced, the Unconscious slips out of our grasp 
like a fairy, and always has something of an impish and unearthly 
aspect. What is done with Consciousness I can be proud of, as my 
own act, brought about by the sweat of my brow, while the per¬ 
formance of the Unconscious is, as it were, a gift from the gods, 
and as any man is merely its favored messenger, it can only teach 
him humility. What is inspired by the Unconscious is complete 
as soon as it comes, is subject to no estimate of its value, but must 
be accepted just as it is; while the Conscious is its own standard, 
it judges and improves itself, and it may be changed at any 
moment, as soon as newly acquired knowledge or a chauge of cir¬ 
cumstances requires. I know what there is of good, and what is 
defective, iu my consciously acquired result; and therefore it gives 
me a feeling of security, because I know precisely what I have, 
and also a feeling of modesty, because I know that this is still 
incomplete. There can be no improvement in the work done by 
the Unconscious, for its earliest as well as its latest inspirations are 
involuntary. But Consciousness contains in itself the infinite per¬ 
fectibility both of the individual aud of the race, and therefore 
constantly prompts to gladsome and endless efforts at self-im- 
provement.*’ 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


Hartmann’s Metaphysics of the Unconscious. 

The doctrine of Kant respecting Time and Space, that they are 
known a priori , because they are subjective Forms of the faculty 
of Sense, was illogically converted by him, as we have seen, into 
the skeptical assumption that they are only subjective, and there¬ 
fore, in their objective aspect, are unreal and illusory. He arbi¬ 
trarily assumes, that there is no correspondence between the world 
of things as they really are, and that of things as they appear to 
us; though his premises afford no ground whatever for this ex¬ 
tension of the doctrine, for the same incompetency of our faculties, 
which prevents us from asserting that things really are as they ap¬ 
pear to us, equally forbids us to maintain that they are not as they 
appear. As necessary inferences from this theory that Space and 
Time have no reality outside of the mind which thinks them, we 
have, first, a system of thorough-going Idealism, or Solipsismus, 
and, secondly, one of Monism, or the absolute Unity of all things. 
Without Space, there is no coexistence, but the universe is con¬ 
tracted to a mathematical point, which is nowhere and has no re¬ 
lation to anything beyond itself ; without Time, there is no suc¬ 
cessive existence, but the past and the future shrink into the 
indivisible present; and even this disappears as soon as it begins 
to be. 

Hartmann here parts company both with Kant and Schopen¬ 
hauer. In a certain sense, he maintains the objective reality both 
of Space and Time, and of the universe of external things, as per¬ 
ceived in them through the senses and the brain. But we soon 
find that this so-called “ objective reality ” is only apparent, — 
only the phenomenality, or outward expression and manifestation, 
of the Unconscious, which is absolutely One and All. On the sur¬ 
face of his doctrine, Hartmann is not only a decided realist, but as 
crass a materialist as Buchner ; and yet, when we come to sound 
the metaphysics of his system to its foundation and inmost essence, 
we find him both an Idealist and Monist, and as earnest and thor- 


460 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ough-going in both respects as Hegel or Schopenhauer. But of 
this hereafter; as yet, we have to do with his philosophy only in 
its realistic aspect, and under the Forms of sense. 

In opposition to Kant, he maintains that Space and Time are 
Forms of real Being, as well as of conscious Thought; that Time 
is directly intuited by experience, and is therefore a posteriori in 
its origin, being made immediately perceptible by the inward sense 
through successive and continuous vibrations in the brain ; and 
that Space, though a priori so far as consciousness is concerned, is 
previously constructed by a synthetic act, for a definite purpose, by 
a purely spiritual function of the Unconscious. Inverting the 
usual course of the argument, Hartmann first reasons inductively, 
from the probabilities of the case, in favor of the actual existence 
of material things outside of the mind, and then infers the reality 
of Space and Time, because they are necessary conditions of such 
existence. Against the supposition of the Idealist, that the Ego 
fashions for itself a dream-world out of its own imaginings, he 
argues very plausibly, that our perceptions are often entirely novel, 
taking us by surprise, while the known creations of mere fancy are 
made up entirely from familiar elements ; that the eyes must be 
opened and the ears unstopped, before the external scene enters, 
whereas mere imagination plays its freaks equally well in dark and 
silent places; that fancy acts only in accordance with the laws of 
the association of ideas, while impressions on the senses often 
startle us by their suddenness and seeming want of conformity to 
law ; that the different senses, through their simultaneous tes¬ 
timony to the same object, as when we at once see, touch, taste, 
and smell an apple, confirm each other; that external things 
operate not only upon our organs of sense, but upon each other, 
according to perfectly definite laws, though there is no reason why 
mere fancy should attribute to them any such uniformity of action ; 
that imagined perceptions can by the conscious Will be called up, 
continued, and repeated at pleasure, while those which present 
themselves as actual are entirely independent of the Will; and 
finally, that every Ego perceives a multitude of other bodies re¬ 
sembling his own, each seemingly animated by a mind like his 
own, each having a similar experience with himself of the vicissi¬ 
tudes of life, and making essentially the same report as to the 
evidence of their senses and their consciousness respecting the 
outer and the inner world. Induction from such facts as these 
leaves an overwhelming weight of probability in favor of the be¬ 
lief that I live, not in a dream-world built up out of my own 


HARTMANN S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 461 


fancies, but in one as real as my own existence. The perceptions 
of sense are not created by me, but are forced upon me from the 
outer world, and are plainly distinguishable from the creatures of 
my imagination, which can be summoned up at pleasure. Then 
Time and Space are also real, for without them the external uni¬ 
verse could not be. The vulgar are right, and the would-be phil¬ 
osophical Idealists, who cheat themselves with the fancy of a fan¬ 
cied world, are wrong. 

And yet, Kant is right in maintaining that Space (not Time) is 
not directly perceived either by sight or touch, but that it is, to 
consciousness at least, a subjective and a priori Form of sense. 
It is, however, a creation of mind anterior to consciousness. It is 
constructed by the Unconscious out of what Lotze calls “ the local 
signs,” i. e., the various external circumstances and indications by 
which we are enabled to distinguish contact with the skin at one 
spot, from contact with it at another. We do not directly see even 
the image painted on the retina of the eye, as that would require 
another eye, back of the external one, in order to see it; we are 
not directly cognizant even of one spot on the surface of the brain, 
as distinct from another. But because the other sensations attend¬ 
ant on being touched here rather thau there are dissimilar, the 
mind, in its preconscious stage, infers a difference of locality in 
order to account for the difference of feeling. Therefore the aid 
of the Unconscious is necessary before we can, out of our sensa¬ 
tions, construct images or perceptions of external things. Just so, 
the formation of a single image from binocular vision is nothing 
else than an unconscious inference. 

We have, then, what Hartmann calls a “real” — that is, an 
actually phenomenal — universe spread out before us in Space, 
peopled with innumerable beings and things, the events or changes 
occurring in it taking place according to physical laws, in Time ; 
and the question almost forces itself upon us, What is it, and to 
what end ? Why is it here ? and why thus, rather than other¬ 
wise ? What is its real inmost being and essence under all these 
phenomenal forms ? And what is its significance, or for what Pur¬ 
pose does it exist ? As we have already seen, there is not one 
living organism in it, animal or vegetable, however minute and 
lowly, which is not, in all its parts, formed, controlled, and di¬ 
rected by an intelligent Final Cause ; and all these organisms, all 
beings and events, through the uniformity and universality of 
Law, are closely bound together into one whole, each operating 
upon and affected by every other. Then, what are the essence and 


162 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the ultimate leading Purpose of the universe as a whole ? This 
is the question which Philosophy has to answer, and which she 
cannot blink without abdicating her office, and falling back into a 
state of shameless indolence and incuriousness. 

Hartmann’s answer is at least frank and explicit. The uni¬ 
verse, he says, is a mere Form or manifestation of “the Uncon¬ 
scious,” which it has assumed in order to rid itself of the burden of 
its miserable existence, by cheating itself into nothingness. This is 
the best answer, perhaps the only one, which an atheist and a 
Pessimist can arrive at, for it is a reductio ad absurdum of the 
principles that he started with. 

We have first to consider in what sense, and by what means, 
the plurality of phenomenal being is reduced by Hartmann to the 
unity of the Unconscious. How can he be a decided Monist, in 
spite of the elaborate argument which he has just constructed in 
favor of the “ real ” existence in Space, outside of our minds, of 
the countless material things which constitute the outer world ? 
His answer is, that the universe is independent of our thought, 
independent even of all human thought. It is not a subjective 
fancy of the percipient Ego of consciousness, not a dream-world 
arbitrarily fashioned by our own vain imaginings; but it is an 
objective manifestation of the Unconscious, which would continue 
to be “ real,” even if there were no eye to behold it, and no 
thought in which it could be reflected. The unity of the Uncon¬ 
scious is not destroyed by the countless multiplication of its phe¬ 
nomenal aspects, any more than the sun in the heavens ceases to 
be one, because its image is mirrored in innumerable pools and 
streams. Herbart is right in maintaining that the multiplicity of 
individual being is as broad and true as the reality of existence it¬ 
self; but his mistake consists in failing to recognize the strictly 
phenomenal character of all reality and all existence. Subjective 
Idealism had a just presentiment that reality is only phenomenal; 
but it distorted and defaced this thought, because it recognized 
only a subjective phenomenality, whereby plurality was degraded 
into a merely personal illusion. In its essence and inmost nature, 
the universe is only an objective manifestation of one omnipresent 
Intellect and Will ; but it is a “ real ” presentation to my thought 
in all its myriad forms, just as the image of the sun reflected in a 
brook is a “ real ” image; and it will continue to be thus mani¬ 
fested after my mind shall cease to be. 

Then, what are Matter and Space per se, in their inmost being, 
apart from the phenomenal aspects under which they are mani- 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 463 

fested to consciousness? Schopenhauer says, Matter consists only 
5>f the purely subjective forms of Time, Space, and Causality pre¬ 
sented to Sense by the universal Will as visible and tangible; and 
therefore it is mere Vorstellung, a Presentation to thought, a 
mental picture. Hartmann says, Matter is the Will and Intellect 
of the Unconscious, made objective in what the physicists call 
“ Force,” which is only a manifestation of mind, a spiritualistic- 
principle. Hence, like Berkeley, he does not idealize Matter in 
the sense of making it unreal, but only spiritualizes it. Force is 
real in the highest or absolute meaning of that term; for it is 
ouly Will and Intellect in action , and therefore it would continue 
both to be and to appear, though there were no brain, no human 
consciousness, to witness its activity. It was thus displayed and 
oojectified in material forms, as we learn from geology, before any 
animal life appeared upon the earth. 

In the chapter on “ Matter as Will and Intellect,” Hartmann 
presents an elegant and concise statement of the Atomic Theory, 
in the form in which it is now accepted by most physicists and 
chemists, and argues conclusively, that the “ atom ” thus conceived 
is merely a mathematical point, which is the seat of force, the as¬ 
sumption of an inert and material substratum of this force being 
an arbitrary and really unmeaning hypothesis. The conclusion at 
which he arrives agrees perfectly with the doctrine propounded, as 
far back as 1758, by Father Boscovich. Hartmann presents his 
conclusion in these words: “ Matter is therefore a system of 
atomic force,? in a certain state of equilibrium. From these atomic 
forces, in then? various combinations and reactions, arise all the so- 
called forces of matter, such as gravitation, expansibility, crystal¬ 
lization, chemical affinity, etc. The lines of action of all the 
forces cut each other in a mathematical point, which we call the 
seat of force, and this seat is movable.” The doctrine of Bosco¬ 
vich, as summed up by Dugald Stewart, is, that “ the ultimate 
elements of which Matter is composed, are uuexteuded atoms, or, 
iu other words, mathematical points, endued with certain powers 
of attraction and repulsion ; and it is from these powers that all 
the physical appearances of the universe arise. The effects, for 
example, which are vulgarly ascribed to actual contact, are all 
produced by repulsive forces, occupying those parts of-space where 
bodies are perceived by our senses.” 

The attractive force of each atom, Hartmann argues, has a defi¬ 
nite end and aim, before the result is produced by it of bringing 
another atom nearer; it must, therefore, be conceived as a striving 


464 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


or effort, and the actual approximation of the two atoms to each 
other, an approximation not yet effected, as the purpose of this 
effort. In so far as the effect is already produced, the striving has 
come to an end, and no longer exists; only so far as the movement 
still remains as yet unrealized, is any effort to realize it possible. 
Hence, the movement, which is a definite one of approach with in¬ 
creasing velocity, must exist in idea, as the purpose of an intellect, 
before it exists in reality, as a result accomplished ; otherwise, it 
would be an aimless effort, without any definite object, which is 
contrary to experience. Then the movement cannot be produced, 
as Schopenhauer supposes, by a piere blind Will or force acting 
vaguely, without reference to any particular result; but this Will 
must be accompanied and directed by Intellect, by which it is 
pointed, so to speak, to a preconceived and determinate end. Con¬ 
sequently, the atomic force, like every other action of the Uncon¬ 
scious, must be viewed as the joint expression of Will and Intellect 
acting together in inseparable union. 

Having found what Matter is, per se, apart from its phenomenal 
manifestation, we have next to consider what the Space is, as being 
per se, in which all Matter exists. Hartmann has already proved, 
that the idea of Space in the human mind is constructed by the 
Unconscious out of “ local signs,” in such wise as to appear a priori 
to consciousness. But what is the external and objective manifes¬ 
tation, to which this idea corresponds ? This also, we are told, is 
a creation of the Unconscious, which builds up both the idea, and 
what is called the “ reality ” of pure Space, if it is a mere Pres¬ 
entation to thought ( Vorstellung), or mental picture, which first 
brings ideal Space before the mind, then the Space exists ideally 
in the Presentation, and this proves that the Presentation itself 
does not exist in the ideal Space. In other words, mental or cog¬ 
nitive action, as such, is wholly independent of Space; and it is ab¬ 
surd to ask after the particular locality, the presence chamber, of 
the intellect in the brain. Mind is wherever it acts ; that is, it is 
ubiquitous to the whole nervous organism. The unconscious Will 
is that which realizes ideal Space, by adding to it “ reality,” or ob¬ 
jective manifestation, which mere thought cannot give. Then, what 
we call “ real ” Space, as a creation of the Will, must be subse¬ 
quent to that which creates it, and therefore the Will, as such, 
exists out of Space, whether the Space be considered as a mere 
Presentation to thought, or as a reality. Hence, both Intellect 
and Will are unspacial in their very nature, since the former cre¬ 
ates Space in idea, and the latter creates it in “ reality.” It fol- 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 465 


lows, therefore, that even the atomic Will, or what we call atomic 
force, exists outside of Space and independent of it; for as Schell- 
ing says, it is prior to extension. 

It also exists outside of Time; for as we have seen, it is charac¬ 
teristic of the action of the Unconscious, that it never wavers or 
doubts, it needs no time for consideration, and it is independent of 
memory, since it acts unerringly as well before as after experience; 
therefore it does not, like conscious reason, proceed by comparison 
and inference, but it grasps the result instantaneously, through its 
infinite power of Hellsehen or clairvoyance , the conclusion being 
instinctively apprehended at once, not after the premises, nor 
through them, but in them, the whole logical process being com¬ 
pleted by one act and in a single moment. The thought of the 
Unconscious, therefore, has no duration in Time ; and though it is 
manifested only at a particular epoch, when an emergency arises, 
and therefore at a definite date, we must remember that this is the 
date, so far as we know, only of its manifestation in the world of 
phenomena, but not of its action per se ; nay, the very act of its 
manifestation through some phenomenal change is that which first 
establishes a difference between one moment and another, that is, 
which first creates Time as a phenomenon , though not as absolute 
being. Try to imagine a universe at perfect rest, manifesting no 
change on its surface, no movement either of sun or star, even con¬ 
sciousness lapsing into quiescence, and therefore ceasing to be, be¬ 
cause not cognizant of any variation of its state. In such a uni¬ 
verse, as in dreamless sleep, one hour would be as a thousand 
years; Time would not even appear to be, since, to our apprehen¬ 
sion at least, if not occupied by events or conscious thoughts, Time 
is a mere blank, is nothingness. 

The realm of the Unconscious, therefore, like the Intelligible 
World of Kant, exists outside of Space and Time ; and the doc¬ 
trine of Monism, the essential Oneness of all things, follows as a 
necessary inference. Space collapses into a mathematical point; 
Time shrinks into the indivisible present moment; and One becomes 
identical with All. The Unconscious creates both of these phe¬ 
nomenal Forms, and thereby individualizes the objects and events 
which are manifested in them. Moreover, as we have just seen, 
the objects themselves, as they all consist of Matter in its various 
forms, whether organic or inorganic, from a clod of earth up to 
man, are also creations of the one omnipresent Will and Intellect; 
so that the universe is the mere expression of its action and its 
nature. Before we can fully understand the motive which led to 
30 


466 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


the formation of the universe and determined its character, we 
must consider Hartmann’s theory of the origin of Consciousness, 
and its dependence upon molecular action in the brain. 

That the cerebral hemispheres are to a certain extent the organ 
of some of our mental faculties, or that through which they act, is 
what no spiritualist thinks of denying; since he might as well deny 
that the eye and ear, together with the portions of the brain spe¬ 
cially connected therewith, are the organs of visual and audible sen¬ 
sation. The language of Hartmann, that the brain, and the gan¬ 
glia which perform in part certain functions of the brain, are the 
conditions of animal consciousness, even seems, if taken literally, to 
go hardly as far as this; since it amounts only to saying, that con¬ 
scious mental action is so far dependent upon the state of certain 
portions of the nervous organism, that it cannot be manifested ex¬ 
cept through their agency. Of course not; we all know perfectly 
well, that when the brains are out, the man will die; and that 
when there is serious lesion or other disturbance of the brain, the 
patient often becomes unconscious. But Materialism pure and 
simple identifies the two kinds of action ; it declares that molecular 
agitation or change in the cerebral hemispheres is sensation and 
thought, the two phenomena being merely two aspects of one and 
the same thing. I object to this doctrine, not merely that it is a 
blank hypothesis without any evidence in its favor, but that it is 
meaningless ; it is equivalent to saying that a dance of atoms is a 
syllogism. Hartmann is prevented from accepting this absurd doc¬ 
trine, because the very essence of his theory is, that Will and In¬ 
tellect in the Unconscious first create the brain at a comparatively 
late stage of their manifestation. Without the previous indepen¬ 
dent action of Mind, not even space, time, or matter would have 
been manifested; there would not have been any brain. Hence, 
Hartmann is forced to adopt the conclusion, which had been pre¬ 
viously enounced by Schelling, that the brain is the condition, or 
necessary prerequisite, for the origin, not of mind as such, but of 
Consciousness. Mind acts independently in the Unconscious ; but 
it cannot become cognizant of itself, and therefore cannot be 
emancipated from its servitude to the Will, till it has deluded the 
Will into building up a brain. 

Consciousness, says Hartmann, is not a continuous and fixed 
state, but a process; it is an action frequently repeated, a con¬ 
stant becoming conscious. Will and Intellect, as we have seen, 
are inseparably united in the Unconscious, which cannot have a 
determinate volition without knowing what it wills, nor a definite 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 467 


conception or presentation to thought without instantly realizing it 
in act by an exertion of Will. Now the essence of Consciousness 
consists in breaking up this companionship, in sundering the union 
of the two faculties, by forcing upon the mind a novel perception 
which is not a purpose of its own volition, and therefore exists in 
opposition to the Will. Consciousness is the stupefaction of the 
Will at this violent intrusion upon its domain, this presence of an 
unexpected and unwelcome visitant. . Because a brain has been 
constructed, an impression upon it from the world without, in spite 
of the opposition of the Will, has become possible. The Un¬ 
conscious has objectively manifested itself by conjuring up an ex¬ 
ternal universe for the very purpose of thus severing the union 
between the Intellect and the Will, and thus releasing the former 
from the misery entailed upon it through its hitherto indivisible 
connection with blind and unreasoning volition, that is, from an 
incessant striving and effort which is constant suffering. It looks 
forward to a state of unbroken calm, to quiet contemplation and 
rest unbroken by the feverous agitations of desire. To this end 
it has created space, and peopled it with countless living organisms, 
rising by imperceptible gradations from the lowest forms of vege¬ 
table life up to animal existence, and so on still upwards to man, 
in whose perfected brain pure conscious thought first becomes pos¬ 
sible without any intermingling of volition or desire. The devel¬ 
opment of Consciousness, and, through that, the severance of Intel¬ 
lect from Will, is the guiding purpose of creation. Through 
Space and Time as principia individuationis , separate individual 
existences, as objective phenomena, first become possible; before 
these Forms were evolved, All was One, as it is still in essence. 
Through the independent action and reaction of these separate ex¬ 
istences on each other, the human brain is affected with the mo¬ 
lecular vibrations which force conscious sensation and perception 
upon the intellect. The action thus rendered necessary is invol¬ 
untary and distasteful, since it takes place without the concur¬ 
rence of the individual Will. Hence Consciousness is born in pain, 
every act of it being attended with aversion and suffering. It is, 
says Hartmann, “ a bitter medicine, but without it no recovery is 
possible; and as it is swallowed at every moment in infinitesimal 
doses, its bitterness soon escapes perception.” 

Some indications of a theory similar to this respecting the origin 
of Consciousness may be gleaned from earlier writers, especially 
from some of the mystics. Thus Jacob Bohme says, “ nothing 
jan become revealed to itself without opposition or contrariety. 


468 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


For if there is nothing which resists it, the process of its develop¬ 
ment goes on unchecked, and it is not thrown back upon itself in 
reflection. But if it does not come back upon itself, as to that from 
which it originally went forth, then it knows nothing of its primi¬ 
tive condition.” And in like manner Schelling argues, that “ if 
the Absolute is to become manifest to itself, then, in respect to its 
objective, it must appear as dependent upon something else, upon 
something foreign to itself. This dependence, however, is not of 
the essence of the Absolute, but belongs merely to its manifesta¬ 
tion.” Hence he concludes, that “ not the mental states them¬ 
selves, but the Consciousness of them, is conditioned by an affec¬ 
tion of the organism; and if the empiricists had restricted their 
assertion to the latter point, there would be nothing to object to 
their doctrine.” 

We come now to the great question between Monism and Plu¬ 
rality or Individualism. Have we sufficient evidence that the Un¬ 
conscious which works in any one living organism, say, in my own 
body and mind, is one and the same with that which similarly 
affects and governs every manifestation of life around me, and 
which is, in fact, omnipresent in nature, creating and controlling 
all objects and events in order to carry out a single purpose? If 
Hartmann’s argument here still leaves a doubt whether he has 
fully proved his point, it is because the question lies within the 
domain of pure metaphysics, and his method, which is that of in¬ 
duction as applied in the physical sciences, appears not only insuf¬ 
ficient, but inapplicable to the conditions of the problem. He 
sanctions and adopts, it is true, the usual metaphysical reasoning 
of the Philosophers of the Absolute, especially that founded upon 
the merely phenomenal character of Space and Time, and the con¬ 
sequent unreality of all distinctions of individual being. But he en¬ 
deavors to supplement and fortify this argument by considerations 
drawn from the various branches of physiology and natural history. - 

He relies, in the first place, upon the axiom denominated Oc¬ 
cam’s razor, eiitia non multiplicanda sunt prater necessitatem, ulti¬ 
mate principles are not to be multiplied more than is absolutely 
necessary. If one principle of the Unconscious, for instance, is 
enough satisfactorily to account for all those operations and pro¬ 
cesses in my own organism which do not come within the purview 
of Consciousness, the burden of proof falls upon him who maiutains 
that there are many such principles, coordinate with each other, 
ind all working harmoniously towards one and the same end. 
The unity of the Unconscious in this case is also farther indicated 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 469 


by the unity of the organism within which it acts, by the conti¬ 
nuity of its action, by the singleness of purpose or final cause 
which seems to be the object of its endeavor, and by the manner 
in which all the parts are made to cooperate with each other and 
with the whole. Moreover, as we have seen, matter and con¬ 
sciousness themselves are only phenomenal forms of the Uncon¬ 
scious ; and therefore the unity of this principle in any individual 
organism is the strongest expression of unity which can be found 
anywhere in nature* 

But the consciousness of Peter is phenomenally distinct from 
that of Paul; and it is certainly conceivable that the Unconscious 
also, which directs the life of one, is not identical with the corre¬ 
sponding principle manifested in the other. Hartmann’s argument 
in favor of the essential unity of this principle is perfectly con¬ 
clusive ; it coincides in every respect with the ordinary argument 
of the theist to prove the unity of God. It is only when he rea¬ 
sons as a Pantheist or Monist, only when he strives to identify the 
One with the All, that the weakness of his theory becomes mani¬ 
fest. It is only in reference to this latter portion of the doctrine, 
that he finds himself reduced to the necessity of maintaining, that 
our idea of the distinction between unity and plurality, after all, is 
merely relative. What we usually call an Individual, whether it 
be a stone, a living organism, a community, or a universe, is not 
absolutely one, for it confessedly has a multiplicity of parts. No 
one denies a sort of unity in creation ; in a certain sense, a creator 
or artist is one with his work, for this is the expression at once of 
his thought, his character, his endowments, and his skill. It is 
commonly said of a great artist, that he puts himself into his work. 

But this is not absolute oneness, of which, as it seems to me, we 
have a perfect type in the absolute indivisibility of the thinking 
Self, which is a pure Monad, so that in respect to it the distinction 
between whole and part is meaningless. I know , for I have the 
direct testimony of consciousness, that the being which I call My¬ 
self is an absolute unit; ‘ that I am one in all my acts, in my re¬ 
sponsibility, in the remembered past and the perceived present; 
that it is not one portion of me which feels, another which imag¬ 
ines, and a third which wills, but that these are only various modes 
of action of one agency. I also know, that my remembered self is 
one and the same with my present self; otherwise, no assertion of 
memory could be trusted, no imputation of wrong-doing could be 
justified, no chain of reasoning depending upon the remembrance 
of its several steps could be relied upon. Hence, no process of in- 


470 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


ference, however ingenious, can shake this knowledge ; for as it 
does not rest upon argument, but upon direct intuition, the reason¬ 
ing which would refute it stultifies itself. One who is conscious 
of having committed a great crime many years ago cannot reason 
himself into a conviction that he is now a different being from the 
one who incurred the guilt; the stings of remorse prove that he is 
one and the same with the perpetrator. When it is urged that we 
cannot describe Self, or give any definition of personality, except 
by enumerating its attributes and successive states, the answer is, 
that in this respect it is in the same category with all the simple 
ideas of consciousness, which, as John Locke told us long ago, can¬ 
not be defined because they do not admit either of analysis or de¬ 
scription. Hence, they cannot be communicated to another person 
except by giving him an opportunity of obtaining them for himself. 
I cannot teach a congenitally blind person what the color blue is; 
and even if the learner has eyes, I can instruct him only by show¬ 
ing him a blue object, and taking for granted, what is by no means 
sure, and never can be rendered sure, that it makes the same im¬ 
pression upon his organs of vision that it does upon mine. If the 
spontaneous action of his intellect had not previously evoked in the 
child’s mind the idea or perception which is called “ myself,” no 
possible instruction, no principle of imitation, no conceivable com¬ 
bination of a sign with the thing signified, could teach him how to 
use the word “ I ” correctly, any more than one blind from birth 
could learn what “ blue ” means. 

Monism is shivered upon this rock, that it is compelled to deny 
the separate individual being of the Ego, and thereby to contradict 
the immediate testimony of consciousness. We have here an in¬ 
dubitable case of absolute unity, like that of a mathematical point; 
and a doctrine of Alleinheit, which seeks to establish merely a 
relative unity, like that of a hive of bees, or even of the several 
parts, or physiological units, of a living organism, does not amount 
to much. Hartmann fails to perceive that the position of Des¬ 
cartes, afterwards adopted by Fichte, is really impregnable. All 
his reasoning upon the subject, ingenious as it is, is actually con¬ 
futed in three words: Cogito, scilicet sum. Though the word 
“ Individual ” properly signifies indivisible , and is therefore strictly 
applicable only to an absolute unit, the Philosophy of the Uncon¬ 
scious assumes that there is a hierarchy of “Individuals,” every 
one of which, except the lowest, is a unit relatively to all which 
are above it, though it is an organized community of those which 
are next below it in the scale. 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 471 


Adopting the cellular theory of Virchow, Hartmann teaches 
that a living organism is a skilfully constituted community of al¬ 
most countless living cells, every one of which has an independent 
life and definite functions, the cooperation of all the different 
classes of them being necessary to keep up the economy of the 
organism as a whole, an Individual of a higher order, which they 
collectively constitute. Billions of such cells circulate in the blood 
of every grown-up man, and all have their various and independent 
offices to perform, like the working bees which keep up the collec¬ 
tive life of the hive. Still farther; any one of these cells has its 
distinct' parts and organs, such as the cell-wall, the matter con¬ 
tained therein, the nucleus, and the nucleolus; and each of these 
has its special functions, the performance of which is necessary in 
order that the collective whole may do its work. Here again, 
therefore, we have an Individual organism constituted by an asso¬ 
ciation of Individuals of a lower order. And nothing hinders us 
from going still lower, guided by the light of analogy when the 
power of the microscope fails, — from considering each of these cell- 
organs as a community, or little state, made up of primitive atoms 
or Leibnitzian Monads, every one of which, through its special 
nature, stage of development, or particular place in the system, 
contributes its part to qualify the cell-organ for its office. 

We have next to consider the relation of the Individual of con¬ 
sciousness, or the spiritual unit, to the external and material Indi¬ 
vidual in which it acts. Here again, according to Hartmann, we 
have a hierarchy of relative units, the consciousness of the cerebral 
hemispheres being the dominant one in the system, and therefore 
controlling and regulating the separate consciousness in each of the 
ganglia or lower nervous centres, although itself dependent in some 
measure on the cooperation of its ministers. And a similar relation 
is asserted to exist between the consciousness of each ganglion and 
that of every separate cell which enters into the formation of that 
ganglion and capacitates it for its work. Lower than this Hart¬ 
mann does not go in search of the phenomenal unit of mind ; for, 
as we have seen, molecular disturbance of a certain degree of 
strength or vivacity is a necessary condition of the origin of con¬ 
sciousness, faint impressions upon the nerves and brain passing 
without notice. In any organism lower than the cell, he finds no 
trace of action energetic enough to give rise to consciousness. 
Each Individual consciousness is constituted by the joint action of 
those next below it in the scale; and, in turn, is itself controlled 
ind inspired by that which is above it, and which enters as an un- 


472 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


conscious factor into its work. Then the brain-consciousness of 
every individual man in the universe may be regarded either as a 
constitutive element, or as an objective manifestation, of the uni¬ 
versal and all-pervading Unconscious; if it be the former, we have 
only a relative unity; if it be the latter, then the doctrine is an 
unproved hypothesis. Either form of the theory contradicts our 
immediate intuition of the independent unity of human conscious¬ 
ness, and rests upon a supposition, which is entirely devoid of evi¬ 
dence, that there is a separate consciousness in every ganglion, and 
even in every cell, of the human organism. 

Hartmann would have us believe, that consciousness does not 
belong to the essence, but only to the phenomenal form or mani¬ 
festation, of individual being. I maintain, on the contrary, that 
self-consciousness is the only strictly indivisible being that we 
directly know, the primitive atom ( Uratome ) being merely a 
supposition invented to explain the phenomena, and either the 
Hod of the theist, or “ the Unconscious ” of our author, being re¬ 
vealed to us not immediately, but by inspiration or inference. He 
says, that the undivided ant or polyp has one consciousness, but 
when cut apart, that it has two; and that this is true, also, of 
parent and offspring before and after their physical connection 
with each other is severed; and also that the halves of two differ¬ 
ent polyps, each of which has a consciousness of its own, when 
brought together and united, form but one animal and one con¬ 
sciousness. I answer, it is an unproved and improbable hypothe¬ 
sis that the ant, polyp, or offspring still in gremio matris, has any 
consciousness at all. He argues, that the doctrine of the Uncon¬ 
scious being one and the same in all things explains all that is 
marvellous and otherwise inscrutable in the phenomenon of Hell- 
sehen or clairvoyance; since on this theory, the seer is identical 
with the seen. The obvious reply is, that the phenomena are also 
perfectly explicable on the doctrine of the theist, that there is an 
Intellect and Will which is omnipresent, but not identified with 
the universe; for the inspiration of the Almighty, which first en¬ 
dowed man with understanding, can also give him “ the vision and 
the faculty divine.” I need not dwell on the remainder of the 
discussion, since it tends to show, at the utmost, as in this last in¬ 
stance, that the essential unity of all things is a possible, but not 
that it is a probable, hypothesis. 

In the popular sayings, which are also maxims of science, that 
Nature does nothing in vain, but always acts for the best, invari¬ 
ably adopting the simplest means of effecting its purpose, Hart- 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 473 


mann finds proof of the Leibnitzian doctrine, which he implicitly 
adopts, that this is the best possible universe, being a manifesta¬ 
tion of the infinite wisdom and power of its author, governor, and 
constant guide. In truth, little more is needed than a recapitula¬ 
tion of what has been already proved in order fully to .establish 
this conclusion. As every action of what we call force is the 
expression of Will, which would not be Will if it were not made 
determinate by a definite content , or aim, every act of the Uncon¬ 
scious must have a special purpose. And this must be the best 
purpose, since it is dictated by an allwise intelligence; for the 
omnipresent Intellect never blunders, wavers, or doubts, but hav¬ 
ing all the data at its command without requiring the aid of mem¬ 
ory, instantaneously grasps the right conclusion from them ; and 
by virtue of its infinite prevision ( Hellsehen ), it must select the 
best possible ends and the best possible means of attaining them. 
Its action is incessant, and whenever or wherever need exists, it 
always intervenes at the fittest moment. All this is seen in the 
healing and recuperative agency of nature; in its first building up 
the organism with its countless contrivances and excellences, and 
then preserving it through perpetually repairing the waste of old 
material ; by its keeping up the species through propagation, and 
constantly ennobling it through “the survival of the fittest.” 
“ These incessant interventions of an allwise Providence are even 
natural; that is, they are not arbitrary, but conformable to law ; 
for they are determined by a logical necessity, and therefore must 
be always adapted to the infinitely varied relations and needs of 
the present moment, and to the ultimate purpose for which all 
things exist.” “ In truth, our contemplations of organic life only 
confirm the lofty affirmation of Christian theology, that the gov¬ 
ernment of God is not merely a general direction of earthly affairs 
as a whole, but its immeasurable perfection and minuteness are 
marvellously revealed in just this respect, that his controlling 
Providence is omnipresent and equally efficient in the least, as in 
the greatest, events.” 

The wisdom of the Unconscious is all the more to be praised 
when it economizes force, and avoids a constantly recurring ne¬ 
cessity of labor, through some ingenious contrivance, whereby in 
each case the end is sure to be obtained in the fittest possible 
manner. The most comprehensive and important of all such con¬ 
trivances is the entire system of physical and chemical laws. But 
as the very nature of mechanism confines it to a class of homoge¬ 
neous cases, while in fact many cases are peculiar in some respects, 


474 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


these contrivances, however admirable, can never do away with 
the necessity of frequent immediate intervention by the Uncon¬ 
scious. As soon as the expenditure of force in the creation of a 
mechanism would be greater than the economy of force effected 
by it, which is the case generally with complex combinations of 
circumstances, recourse must be had to what is called a special 
Providence. Of this nature are all inspirations to individual 
human minds whereby the course of history is permanently 
affected, and the tide of culture and progress is turned towards 
the end which the Unconscious always had in view. A thought 
suddenly occurring at the right moment to a Cromwell or a 
Napoleon, a Luther or a Loyola, may alter the whole aspect of 
human affairs in the civilized world. 

In view of such considerations as these, we cannot avoid attrib¬ 
uting to the Unconscious the divine qualities of omniscience, omni¬ 
presence throughout all time, and absolute wisdom. Then we 
must adopt the doctrine of Leibnitz, and believe that, at the begin¬ 
ning of all things, all possible universes were present in idea to 
the divine Intellect, and that this universe was made actual merely 
because it is the best possible out of the whole number. Being 
incapable of error, the Unconscious cannot have been deceived in 
its estimate of the comparative value of this world ; and being 
omnipresent and incessantly active throughout all time, there could 
not have been any pause or omission in its government, whereby 
the world could have deteriorated from its pristine state. These 
are the conclusions, be it observed, of an avowed materialist and 
atheist, who finds himself driven to them by inductive reasoning 
from observed facts. 

He refuses to admit, however, the Remainder of the doctrine of 
Leibnitz, that evil is merely of a privative character, since it is not 
the entire absence, but only a diminution, of conceivable good. 
Designating an unmixed good as A, and an evil as a, Hartmann 
argues, that any reasonable person would desire to possess A alone, 
rather than A a. But he is wrong, for by supposition, a is not 
unmixed evil; and if the amount of good in it predominates over 
f he evil, while the evil is also a necessary condition of the existence 
of this good, then A -}- a is preferable to A alone. It is an evil to 
have a broken finger; but this is no sufficient reason for ampu¬ 
tating it, since even in its present state, with the chance that the 
bone may be reunited, it is better than no finger at all. The doc¬ 
trine of Leibnitz merely affirm's that there is no evil without some 
compensation ; and this is true, if we take a sufficiently broad view 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 475 


of each case. Even if the finger be amputated, a hand with three 
fingers is not to be condemned as an incumbrance. Our view is 
sufficiently broad only when we consider human life as a whole; 
before the Pessimist can establish his conclusion against Leibnitz, 
he ought to take the aggregate results of existence, and show that 
there is an absolute preponderance of evil over good. This he 
cannot do, even if we take for granted the illogical assumption, 
which he always makes, that happiness, and not holiness, is man’s 
highest interest. 

But Hartmann is right in maintaining that the principal doctrine 
of Leibnitz leaves the matter short; for although the universe in 
which we live is the best possible, it may very well be that it is 
still so bad that no universe at all, that is, nothingness, would be 
preferable. “ Bad is the best ” is even a popular saying; the best 
road between two towns in a rugged district may still be a detest¬ 
able one. The philosophy of Leibnitz, however, when thus en¬ 
grafted upon that of Schopenhauer, is an immense improvement 
on the doctrine of the latter; since the union of the two doctrines 
proves, that the only evil which exists is inherent in the nature of 
things, and is properly regarded as “ metaphysical ” or irremediable. 
The supposition of its removal being a contradiction and an ab¬ 
surdity, the existence of it brings no imputation either upon the 
wisdom or the goodness of the Creator. The presence of the so- 
called evil may be even a necessary means of producing the utmost 
possible amount of good, so that its absence or removal would be a 
positive defect in the plan of the universe. If the compensatory 
good is in considerable excess over the harm resulting from the only 
possible means of creating that good, it is obvious that the aggre¬ 
gate beneficial result will be greater than it would have been if 
all harm had been prohibited. Hartmann himself points out for 
admiration the wisdom of the Unconscious, as manifested by im¬ 
planting in the human heart those impulses of pity, beneficence, 
gratitude, distributive fairness, and retributive justice, which count¬ 
eract the feeling of egoism or selfishness that is necessary for the 
preservation of individual well-being. Here, surely, the net result 
of good obtained is greater than would have been possible, had self¬ 
ishness been altogether eliminated. 

After what has been said, we may dismiss unnoticed Hart¬ 
mann’s long and gloomy disquisition upon the miseries <?f human 
life, whereby he attempts to prove that the existence of the uni¬ 
verse is only an impertinent and burdensome interlude in the 
comparatively blissful realm of nothingness, and that a well-in* 


476 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


formed intellect would prefer not to be. He admits that the 
whole inquiry, though important in its bearings on the ultimate 
principles of philosophy, is not of immediate influence on the sub¬ 
ject promised in the title of his work, u the Unconscious.” Most 
of his argument is intended to dissipate the illusions of the vulgar 
mind in respect to the attainableness of happiness either here or 
hereafter, and thereby to induce the educated and thinking mind 
to strive only after such improvement of the intellect as will 
finally correct these illusions, and dispose mankind generally to 
bring the world to an end by common consent. But the whole - 
subject of Pessimism has been considered at sufficient length in 
connection with the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and I gladly 
waive any further treatment of the dismal topic. A healthy 
mind, not constitutionally disposed to gloom, and neither harassed 
by exceptional experience of the ills of life, nor corrupted by met¬ 
aphysical refinements, could not seriously entertain the theory for 
a moment. 

We come now to the last question, What is the ultimate Pur¬ 
pose, the final end and aim, to which all minor and immediate aims 
are subservient, for the creation of the world and for the develop¬ 
ment of its affairs through its continuance in being? What motive 
had the measureless wisdom of “ the Unconscious ” for this par¬ 
ticular manifestation of itself, when it was free to assume any 
other mode of being, or to carry out any other “ Process ” of de¬ 
velopment ? This ultimate motive, according to Hartmann, cannot 
be the promotion of justice and morality, or the increase of virtue ; 
for he is a utilitarian, and holds that virtue is not an end, but only 
a means for the attainment of some worthier object. Neither can 
it be happiness, for he thinks he has proved that this is not ob¬ 
tained at any stage of the Process, but only its opposite, misery, 
this being aggravated, too, as the development of history goes on, 
through the clearing up of illusions and the augmentation of con¬ 
sciousness. Neither can freedom be the aim of the Process, “ for 
I hold that freedom is nothing positive, but only the absence of 
compulsion ; and since the Unconscious is one and all, there is 
nothing which could place it under constraint.” Freedom, more¬ 
over, is a consciousness of the absence of necessity; and therefore 
the increase of freedom is identical with the enhancement of con¬ 
sciousness. And this is a sufficient indication of what is already 
evident on other grounds, that we can hope to ascertain the ulti¬ 
mate purpose of creation only by searching for it in that direc¬ 
tion where we behold a decided and constant progress. And 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 477 


this is to be found in the development of consciousness; for 
here alone we witness continual advancement from the primitive 
cell up to the dawn of animal life, and thence to the culmination 
of such life in the brain of man. Thus Hegel says, “ every 
thing which takes place in heaven and on earth, the life of God 
and all that is done in time, strives only to this end, that the 
Spirit may know itself, may become an object to itself, may rise 
from self-involved to distinct and separate being; it is self-diremp- 
tion or duplication, in order to be able to find itself and to come 
to itself.” 

The ever-rising development of consciousness, therefore, marks 
the drift of the current, and shows the direction in which we are 
hastening; yet it cannot be, in itself, the end or ultimate purpose 
of the journey. For consciousness, as we have seen, is born in 
pain, lives in pain, and purchases by pain every step in its own 
advancement. And what has it in itself as a compensation for all 
this suffering? Only a vain duplication of self in a mirror! Was 
there not, then, already real misery enough, without doubling it in 
the magic-lantern of consciousness ? Since the infinite wisdom of 
the ruling Intellect must be opposed to any such increase of suf¬ 
fering, it cannot be that consciousness is an end unto itself, but its 
development must serve as a means to some higher end. Every 
thing which lives strives after happiness; this is the most universal 
principle of action that we know of; it is the essence of the Will 
itself seeking its own gratification. Mere Will, however, though it 
is the only spring of activity, is essentially blind; it is not merely 
illogical or irrational, because it does not reason at all, even 
wrongly. It simply craves, and acts out its cravings in automatic 
volitions. Hence it is properly alogical, being entirely devoid of 
reason, just as the Intellect, being in its very nature distinct from 
Will, cannot act, but simply knows. Consequently, this ill-matched 
pair, indissolubly united in the Unconscious, cannot cooperate; 
neither can help the other. Vainly does the all-wise Intellect 
perceive that the unreasoning Will is entirely in the wrong, since 
its ceaseless craving for happiness merely increases misery ; the 
alogical Will cannot heed its warnings, and cannot impart its own 
capacity of action to its wise but helpless companion. As long as 
they are tied together, like a balky team, they neutralize each 
other’s powers. Blind Will determines that the universe, miser¬ 
able as it is, shall continue in being; for this is the result of the 
persistent action of Will. Intellect determines how and what the 
universe shall be, not directly indeed, but through holding up a 


478 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 


picture of the best possible state of the world as something to be 
striven for ; and this ideal is instantly realized by the Will. 

Bad is the best, however; and this the Intellect knows full 
well. It has recourse to an artifice, therefore, in order to obtain 
the utmost feasible good. Happiness is unattainable ; but freedom 
from pain, which is the nearest possible approximation to it, may 
be secured by a return to nothingness. Hence the Intellect forms 
the conception of a universe in which the Will shall be divided 
against itself, through the indefinite multiplication of individuals, 
each striving independently for ends of its own ; and the necessary 
result of such independent action, as we ha.ve seen, is the emanci¬ 
pation of Intellect from the Will through the development of 
Consciousness. This conception of a universe, of course, is in¬ 
stantly realized by the blind Will, which knows not that it is 
thereby cheated into a contest with itself, that ideas will thus be 
forced upon it which it has not willed, that thought will thus be 
severed from action, and that the finite Intellect, thus made inde¬ 
pendent, will be gradually led, through the enhancement of con¬ 
sciousness and the increase of knowledge, to will the annihilation 
of all things, and thus to rid itself of the misery of existence. 
As Intellect can never be separated from the Will in the Uncon¬ 
scious, the ultimate purpose of the universe is to effect this divorce 
through the action of finite conscious minds and the advancement 
of knowledge, which must finally correct the illusions which keep 
up the vain pursuit of happiness, and bring about by common 
consent the end of all things. 

Schopenhauer’s philosophy aims at the same result, but pro¬ 
poses to accomplish it by a different method, namely, by advising 
the individual man to cease to will, and thereby, through asceti¬ 
cism, self-denial, and the privation of nourishment, to cease to be. 
Hartmann justly objects, that this would be only protracted and 
painful suicide by starvation, and be no more efficient as a means 
of bringing the world to an end than the death of an individual in 
the ordinary course of nature. Final deliverance from the misery 
of this world cannot be obtained by an act of individual Will, as 
this is merely phenomenal, but only by universal consent, which 
would be an expression of the universal Will that is both one and 
all. And this deliverance is not near at hand, but must be 
worked for as an object in the distant future. It can take place 
only at the close of “ the Process,” at the termination of the 
struggle between Consciousness and the Will, when the develop¬ 
ment of the former shall have reached its climax, at the last day, 


HARTMANN’S METAPHYSICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 479 


when the cravings of the Will shall be silenced, when activity 
Bhall cease, and “ Time shall be no more.” We can do something, 
indeed, to hasten this consummation, by laboring for the advance¬ 
ment of knowledge, which will finally convince the whole human 
race, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Not by personal 
renunciation and cowardly withdrawal from the conflict, therefore, 
as Schopenhauer teaches ; but by bearing our burden, by affirming 
the Will to live with all its pains and sorrows, by devoting our¬ 
selves to the cultivation of the intellect and to the education of the 
race, shall we help to bring the universe nearer to the haven of 
rest, to the blissful repose of nothingness. u Bravely onward, then, 
in the great Process of development, as laborers in the Master’s 
vineyard! For it is only this Process which can lead to final re¬ 
demption.” 

And this is the Gospel of Monistic Atheism! It is one long 
wail of despair, which always must have utterance when man 
finds that he is without a Father, and the universe without a 
God. It would be a waste of time and effort to dwell upon the 
extravagance of the theory, or to offer arguments in its confuta¬ 
tion ; for I cannot believe that it is seriously entertained, as an 
opinion influencing conduct, by any sane student, or even by its 
author himself. Descartes laid one permanent corner-stone of 
modern metaphysics in his Cogito, scilicet sum ; and Kant estab¬ 
lished another in his “ Groundwork of Ethics,” when he pointed 
out the absolute and imperative character of the Moral Law. 
Any system which is based upon an arbitrary denial of these two 
fundamental truths of consciousness may be summarily put aside; 
it can merit notice only as a matter of curiosity, and as an illus¬ 
tration of the wild vagaries of which the human mind is capable. 
Nearly all that is really valuable in Hartmann’s work is found in 
its first two Books, which contain the whole Philosophy of the 
Unconscious properly so called. In these we have a storehouse of 
curious and interesting facts, admirably illustrated and dovetailed 
into system, and much that is original and profound in speculation. 
The third Book, containing what is called “ the Metaphysics of 
the Unconscious,” is for the most part an exercise of perverted 
ingenuity, for it is a jumble of incongruities and contradictions. 
It is an attempt to reconcile materialism with spiritualism, realism 
with idealism, optimism with pessimism, atheism with the belief in 
a divine Providence, and monism with common sense. But even 
this medley will be of service to the attentive student, as it evinces 
a large acquaintance with German philosophy, and great power of 




480 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

reducing its different systems to their briefest possible expression, 
of pointing out their leading characteristics, and making nice dis¬ 
tinctions between them. Even at his worst, Hartmann has three 
considerable merits; he is learned, he is ingenious, and he is never 
dull. 


INDEX 


♦ 


Absolute, philosophy of the, 328 ; ex¬ 
planation of the, 329 ; cannot be 
thought, 339. 

Antinomies of Kant, 233. 

Aristotle on the origin of knowledge, 
40 ; on Universals, 132. 

Berkeley, theory of vision by, 141; his 
theory of Idealism, 148 ; admits the 
uniformity of nature, 151; reduces 
force to volition, 152; realizes ideas, 
153. 

Categories, Kant on the, 195, 202; ta¬ 
ble of the, 204. 

Causality, principle of, 287; in vegeta¬ 
ble life, 289. 

Cause, distinguished from Substance, 
30 ; secundum fieri distinguished from 
secundum esse, 32; Final, 274; Efficient, 
278 ; Causa cognoscendi , four sorts of, 
292 ; Causa essendi , 293. 

Comte, philosophy of, 264. 

Conceptualism, meaning of, 129; truth 
of, 135. 

Condillac, philosophy of, 155. 

Continuity, law of, 110,112 ; Locke and 
Grove on, 122. 

Critique of Pure Reason analyzed, 170; 
of Revelation, by Fichte, 311. 

Darwinism anticipated by Leibnitz, 
123. 

Descartes, biography and character of, 
22; not a skeptic, 23 ; method and 
starting-point of, 24; his Cogito , ergo 
sum f 25, 34; on the veracity of God, 
31 


26 ; his proof of the being of God, 27; 
on Innate Ideas, 28; neglects the idea 
of Cause, 30; on continuous creation, 
31; on the essence of matter and mind, 
32; on the idea of the Infinite, 33 ; on 
thought and the Ego, 35; different 
works of, 36. 

Empiricism refuted by Kant, 164. 

Essence of matter and mind, 32; nom¬ 
inal distinguished from real, 33 ; He¬ 
gel on the doctrine of, 384. 

Ethics, Kant’s Groundwork of, 245; of 
Fichte, 324; of Schopenhauer, 417, 
425. 

Fichte, philosophy of, 310; life and 
character of, 311, 325; Critique of 
Revelation by, 311; Wissenschaftslehre 
of, 312; fundamental principle of, 313; 
on the Ego, 316; builds on Descartes, 
317 ; absolute Idealism of, 318; the 
method of, 320; other principles of, 
322 ; Ethics of, 324; on the Absolute, 
330. 

Final Cause, Positivism on, 274; Hart¬ 
mann on, 277, 434. 

Freedom of the will proved, 296. 

God, veracity of, 26; proof of the being 
of, 27 ; the idea of, in the soul of man, 
42, 48; three forms of the idea of, 49; 
threefold root of the innate idea of, 52; 
revealed by the religious sentiment, 
id. ; and by conscience, 53; defects of 
the metaphysician’s idea of, 54, 242; 
Spinoza’s definition of, 66 ; Male- 



482 


INDEX 


branche on perception through ideas 
in, 79; Kant on the idea of, 238. 

Hamilton, Sir W., borrowed his phil¬ 
osophy from Pascal, 87, 91; on the 
limitations of human knowledge, 97; 
on Freewill, 297. 

Hartmann on Final Cause, 277, 434; 
life and character of, 429; pessimism 
of, 431, 475; Monism of, 433, 468 ; his 
proofs of the Unconscious, 435; on 
instinct, 437 ; on the plastic power of 
nature, 440; on Will and Intellect, 
441; on language, 443; on memory, 
448 ; materialism of, 449, 466; on the 
emotions, 452; aesthetics of, 454; on 
mysticism, 456; on consciousness, 457, 
466 ; on metaphysics, 459; on Space 
and Time, 460; on the purpose of the 
universe, 461, 476; on Matter, 462; 
on the genesis of Space, 464; on in¬ 
dividualism, 471; optimism of, 472; 
on the origin of evil, id.; refutes 
Schopenhauer, 478; faults and merits 
of, 479. 

Hegel, life and character of, 357; pe¬ 
dantic dialect of, 358; his absolute 
Idealism, 359; polar logic of, 360; 
conciliatory system of, 362; Phenom¬ 
enology of the Spirit by, 364 ; resolves 
all into one, 365; on Absolute Being, 
366; identifies God with man, 370; 
compared with Locke, 371; technical¬ 
ities of, id.; develops one into all, 
373 ; Immanent Dialectic of, 374 ; his 
logic illustrated, 376; on the Idea of 
Pure Being, 377; his first trichotomy, 
378; illustrated, 380; summary result 
of, 381; ambiguities of, 382; baseless 
assumptions of, 383; on the doctrine 
of Essence, 384; on outward Nature, 
386; on Spirit, 388. 

Idealism, Berkeley’s theory of, 148; 
Kant’s confutation of, 215; Fichte’s 
system of, 318 ; insufficiency of, 319; 
Hegel’s absolute, 359, 370; Schopen¬ 
hauer on, 394. 

Ideas, Malebranche on perception by, 77; 


and on the origin of, 78; classification 
of, by Leibnitz, 102; Kant on tran¬ 
scendental, 225 ; genesis of, 226. 

Imagination, Kant on the office of, 193, 

211 . 

Infinity, Descartes on the idea of, 33; 
of space, 94; of time, 95; Kant on the 
idea of, 237. 

Innate Ideas, Descartes on, 28, 38; 
criteria or tests of, 43; proved by the 
instincts of brutes, 45; how they ex¬ 
ist in the mind, 46; of God, 51. 

Kant, philosophy of, 156; life and char¬ 
acter of, 160 ; opposes dogmatism, 163 ; 
and empiricism, 164; on a priori ele¬ 
ments of knowledge, 167; on Sense and 
Understanding, 168,175 ; on analytical 
and synthetical judgments, 170; tran¬ 
scendental aesthetics of, 171; percep¬ 
tion analyzed by, 173; on Space, 176; 
and Time, 177; on empirical reality, 
181: on transcendental ideality, 182; on 
arithmetic, 186; on geometry, 187; on 
the imagination, 193 ; on self-con¬ 
sciousness, 194 ; on the Categories, 
195, 202; revised theory of perception 
by, 197; rejects idealism, 198, 215; 
on the Ego of consciousness. 200, 231; 
on pure Physics, 209; on Schematism, 
210 ; on the Schema of Causality, 217; 
his Transcendental Dialectic, 221; on 
the Unconditioned, 224; on Transcen¬ 
dental Ideas, 225; on the Antinomies, 
233 ; on the Infinite, 237; on the proof 
of a God, 238, criticism of, 241; his 
Groundwork of Ethics, 245; on ab¬ 
solute good, 246, 255; on the Categori¬ 
cal Imperative, 248; on necessity and 
free will, 252; on immortality and a 
God, 257; Schopenhauer’s criticism of, 
397; on aesthetic perception, 421. 

Knowledge, origin of, 38; Plato, 
Wordsworth, and Keble on, 39; Aris¬ 
totle on, 40 ; Manning on, 41. 

Language, symbolic use of, 20; the Un¬ 
conscious in, 443. 

Leibnitz, on the criteria of innate 


INDEX. 483 


ideas, 43; on the Monad, 45; on the 
Primum Cognitum, 47 ; comprehen¬ 
sive genius of, 99; life of, 100; logic 
and method of, 102 ; his optimism, 
103, 474; origin of evil explained by, 
105, 475; on necessary and immuta¬ 
ble truths, 107; scheme of universal 
writing by, 109; monadologv of, 110, 
114; three fundamental axioms of, 110; 
preestablished harmony of, 115 ; on 
Substance, 116; doctrine of latent ideas 
by, id.; reconciles mechanism with 
Teleology, 118; on the scale of exist¬ 
ences, 120 ; development theory of, 
121 ; anticipations of modern science 
by, 123; his theory compared with 
Darwin’s, id. ; conflicting doctrines 
reconciled by, 125. 

Locke, Essay on Human Understanding 
by, 11; on the law of Continuity, 122. 

Logic, definition of, 16 ; of Hegel, 374. 

Malebranche, life and character of, 73; 
philosophy of, 74; his doctrine of me¬ 
diate perception, 77; on the origin of 
ideas, 78 ; on seeing all things in God, 
79; on Occasional Causes, 80; on Cau¬ 
sation, 82; doctrine of, confirmed by 
modern science, 83 ; on the ubiquity of 
God, 84; on the intelligible world, 
85. 

Manning on the origin of knowledge, 

41. 

Mansel on conceiving creation, 98. 

Mathematics, Kant’s theory of, 183, 
185; an intuitive science, id. 

Matter deteriorates by use, 14; reduced 
to force, 149. 

Metaphysical conception of God de¬ 
fective, 54. 

Mill, J. S.,on conceiving infinite space, 
94; on determinism of the will, 305. 

Monadology of Leibnitz explained, 110, 
114. 

Motivation, action of, 290, 293, 298. 

Necessity, Spinoza’s doctrine of, 70; 
Kant on, 252; Huxley and Spencer on, 
261; Schopenhauer on, 286; disproved, 


296; presupposes freedom, 304; statis¬ 
tical evidence on, 308. 

Nominalism, meaning of, 128, 132; truth 
of, 134; extravagance of, 139. 

Optimism of Leibnitz versified by Pope, 
104; Hartmann on, 431, 472. 

Pascal, life and character of, 87; on the 
grandeur and misery of man, 89 ; the 
philosophy of, 90; Hamilton’s philos¬ 
ophy borrowed from, 87, 91; on the 
Law of the Conditioned, 93; refutes 
empiricism, 94; lesson of humility en¬ 
forced by, 96; on the limitations of 
human knowledge, 97. 

Pessimism, Schopenhauer on, 413; argu¬ 
ments for, 414 ; fallacy of, 418 ; Hart¬ 
mann on, 431. 

Philosophy of the 17th century, 1 ; 
study of, inevitable, 9; definition of, 
10; reactions in the history of, 154, 
259; of the Absolute, 328; of the Un¬ 
conscious, 429, 432. 

Plato on the origin of knowledge, 39 ; 
on ideas, 131, 420. 

Polar logic of Fichte, 321; of Schelling, 
342; of Hegel, 360. 

Pope, optimism of, derived from Leib¬ 
nitz, 104. 

Positivism explained and criticized, 
259; two meanings of, 264; theology 
of, 265; essential doctrine of, 266 ; 
assumes that matter is indestructible, 
269; assumes that memory is trust¬ 
worthy, 270; assumes the existence of 
self, 271; has no ground for induction, 
272; denies Final Cause, 274 ; on Effi¬ 
cient Causes, 278; incapacitates Phys¬ 
ical Science, 281; bad logic of, 283. 

Preestablished Harmony of Leib¬ 
nitz, 115. 

Psychology, definition of, 12. 

Realism and Nominalism, 127, 129; 
truth of, 133. 

Schelling, philosophy of, 327; on the 
Absolute, 328; life and character of, 


484 


INDEX 


4 


333; influence of, on physical science, 
336; intellectual intuition of, 338, 344; 
argues against Fichte, 340; the method 
of, 342; objective pantheism of, 345 ; 
on Nature, 346; Potenzes of, 348; on 
Absolute Identity, 351; subjective the¬ 
ory of, 354. 

Schematism of Kant, 210. 

Schopenhauer on Space and Time, 
179; on the principle of Sufficient 
Reason, 285; life and character of, 
389; on the World as Presentation and 
Will, 392; idealism of, 394; on Time 
and Space, 398, 401; on the World as 
Will, 403; on Force as Will, 406; on 
Occasional Causes, 409; on animal life, 
411; on death, 412; pessimism of, 413; 
ethics of, 417, 425; aesthetics of, 420 ; 
on the Platonic Idea, id.; on injustice, 
426; on pity, 427. 

Science distinguished from knowledge, 
15; Physical, depends solely on the 
senses, 267 ; ambiguity of, 268; on 
Final Cause, 275. 

Space, Kant on the idea of, 176; a priori 
truths concerning, 179; relations of, 
188. 

Spinoza, life and character of, 60; in¬ 
debted to Descartes, 61; Substance 
wrongly defined by, 62; on the causa 
suij 63; his definition of God, 66; on 
the unity of Substance, 68 ; his doc¬ 
trine of Necessity, 70; on Absolute Be¬ 
ing, 72. 

Substance distinguished from Cause, 
30 ; Spinoza’s definition of, 62 ; an ab¬ 
stract general idea, 65; Spinoza’s proof 
of the unity of, 68 ; Leibnitz on the 
idea of, 116; Kant on the Category of, 
213. 

Sufficient Reason, principle of, 110; 
Schopenhauer on, 285; four-fold root 
of, 287; analysis of, 294; of volition, 
298. 


Teleology reconciled with mechanism, 
118. 

Thought, science of, 17; perception of 
difference necessary for, 18 ; three pro¬ 
cesses of, 19 ; laws of, 20 ; proceeds by 
limitation and negation, 21; possibility 
of abstract, 136; in music, 137 ; of re¬ 
lation or ratio, always general, id. 

Time, Kant on the idea of, 177; a priori 
truths concerning, 179. 

Transcendental ^Esthetics of Kant, 
170; Logic of Kant, 192, 219; Dialec¬ 
tic of Kant, 221; meaning of, 222. 

Unconditioned, Kant on the, 224. 

Unconscious, the, Philosophy of, 4291 
432; proofs of, 435 ; involuntary move¬ 
ment, 436 ; in instinct, 437; in the heal¬ 
ing power of nature, 439; in mental 
action, 442; in language, 443; ill 
thought, 445; in invention, 447: in 
memory, 448; in aesthetic judgments, 
454; in character, 455; value of, 457 ; 
defects of, 458; Metaphysics of, 459 ; 
exists outside of Space and Time, 465; 
infinite wisdom of, 472; ultimate pur¬ 
pose of, 476. 

Understanding, Kant on the, 223. 

Universals or general ideas, 130; Plato 
on, 131; Aristotle on, 132; not limited 
by space or time, 138. 

Vision, Berkeley’s theory of, 141. 

Will, as absolute good, Kant on, 246; 
freedom of the, 285, 294; not subject 
to compulsion, 303; determinism of 
the, 305; whimsical and capricious, 
306; uniformity of, 307; as guided by 
intellect, 441. 

Wordsworth on the origin of knowl¬ 
edge, 39 ; pantheistic poetry of, 335. 






























































































































